With the New Year upon us, NU spoke with some of the top players in risk management to discover where the greatest challenges and opportunities are in 2012. Some common themes that emerged: the increasing attention being paid to cyber liability; the ever-growing importance of developing, or further refining, an enterprise risk management (ERM) program; and the need for risk managers to position themselves not as insurance buyers—but as strategic, value-creating assets who can respond to the broader business concerns of their organization’s C-suite leaders. Digital subscribers can click on each response to read more from these risk experts.

Michael Liebowitz
Director of Risk Management and Insurance
New York University
Member of NU’s Risk Managers Advisory Board

I’ve spent five years here trying to get in front of the board. I finally got there, not with a traditional risk-management program but with an enterprise risk-management program. The people who sit on most boards are highly educated people, but they are not risk managers. They continually hear the words “risk management.” [The opportunity is to] show them how it’s working in their organization—and that it’s not just about insurance. All management is risk management. Risk managers need to understand that we need to get beyond the insurance-buyer idea. It’s the idea of getting into the business unit and providing a value-added service.