Ferma Blog 1: Defining risk for the insurance & risk managing industry
21st September 2011
Ferma Blog 1: Defining risk for the insurance & risk managing industry
Björn Müller, Managing Director of Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance Germany & Switzerland
Interviewer: Historically certification bodies have been associated with risk through business continuity, information security and IT service management specifically BS2599, ISO27001, and ISO20000 to name but a few, are those still the main standards relevant to risk or are there now others?
Björn Müller: Yes, these standards are still high on the top list of the risks in the insurance and risk managing industry. The first area that I would like to highlight is reputational risk, which can result if a company’s business is interrupted and cannot deliver their goods. This can cause a reputational risk; if IT interruption or IT failure is involved then the potential loss of data can cause a reputational risk and this is very high on the industries agenda. The second area is that of the supply chain, supply chain is currently a very, very high topic. Concerns are coming from the recent incident in Japan and the volcano last year, and these are hot topics. The Risk Managers are discussing options with insurance companies and industry brokers.
Naturally, there are special risk related standards like food safety, so everybody knows if you buy food somewhere you want to be sure that the food you buy for you yourself and your family is safe. There is a risk to the company because if there is a failure or a mistake or an incident in the food industry then the reputation of the brand can be immediately damaged and lead to a big decrease of market share and business volume of a company.