RMs Must Expand Skills To Keep Jobs

Ultimately, Mr. Perry said, a risk manager who lacks the desired financial skills or know-how could be pushed out of a job.

The skills currently desired by employers are "much more financially oriented," he said. "Companies are looking for risk managers with skill sets that include the whole financial arena of risk financing, alternative risk-transfer, and captives."

Because of the complexities of the current insurance and job markets, "all of this is very important," he said. "A company a year ago might not have cared about it, but today because of the market, they care about it."

Mr. Perry stressed that now is a good time for mid-level risk managers to reassess their skills. "I would tell them that if they never thought of it before, it's time to enhance their academic background in terms of more finance courses," he said. "If they've never thought of going for their masters in finance, it's time they did."

An additional factor, he said, is the recession. "I'm getting 50-to-100 unsolicited resumes a day from CEOs, CFOs and COOs who are out of work, which is a field that I don't even handle," he said. "I don't think the employment market will turn the corner for another six-to-nine months."

Robert Hoyt, professor and head of the risk management and insurance program at the Terry College of Business, part of the University of Georgia in Athens, backed up Mr. Perry's observations.

Although the school has seen an increase in students interested in pursuing the field of risk management, "there aren't as many entry-level positions in risk management departments," he said.

The school's research that profiles people moving into chief risk officer or similar positions found that "those people, by and large, do possess that kind of broadened exposure base. They have higher-degree levels of masters and even doctorate degrees," he said.

Those who are currently filling high-level positions, he said, "possess a broad base of skills. We're actually starting to see a pattern with people, such as the risk manager at Delta, who recently moved into a CRO position. He has a broad base in terms of his experience with the industry, but he also holds a masters degree and reflects that kind of need to broaden your skill set as much as possible."

Mr. Hoyt explained that many organizations now want risk management employees to be able to respond to whatever is going on in the market, "and also its language," he said. "Because of a lot of the developments over the last six months, now risk management is getting more attention at the level of the CFO and board of directors. Now they want to have more conversations with regard to risk management."

Those conversations, he said, mean that risk managers "need to be able to converse in a framework" that registers with executives.

The CFO, he added, now wants to talk about "the company's operation, profit and loss, their leverage, choices about capital structure, cost of capital, and they want that conversation in the context of discussing risk management for their firm," he said.

Mr. Hoyt said the university keeps in touch with alumni and invites companies to contact the school "if they need somebody with years of experience for a job."

During the past year, he said, the school was contacted by three organizations looking to place a second-in-command position in a risk management department. In all three cases the companies were looking for financial analysis capabilities, he said. "They were very specific about wanting somebody with this upward mobility to their background," he emphasized.

The already hardening insurance market and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were "important triggers" in terms of raising the bar for risk managers, he said. Another important factor is Enron.

"Even in the absence of Sept. 11, [Enron] would have had a big impact [on risk managers]," Mr. Hoyt explained. "Those two events are contributing to the much increased interest in what it takes to do risk management."

Mr. Hoyt, however, added that there is still a place for traditional risk management. "I think it's more about how it's going to be housed and is there going to be another manager associated with risk that coordinates that," he said.