Implementation of Enterprise Risk Management practices

Abstract

The existence of complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity in current business environment promotes corporates need to establish good risk governance. Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) has been considered as a way to achieve good risk governance to deal with both upside (e.g. exploit opportunities) and downside (e.g. reduce insolvency) of risk and uncertainty. ERM holistically treats all risk to achieve organisation objective in normal, volatile and crisis situations. The thesis tackles issues in the implementation of ERM and how it has been adopted and implemented in Indian and UK insurance market. Mixed research methods have been employed from a qualitative stand point to explore the research issues, consisting of two surveys in UK and India, over 50 interviews and two case studies in the Indian and UK insurance markets. The research revealed that there is an ambiguity in the understanding of the definitions of ERM and risk appetite across both countries. Major issues in ERM implementation in Indian insurance market are fraud, under-risk reporting and insufficient resources to develop an appropriate risk culture. In the UK insurance market issues are related to customer complaints, fines/penalties, over-risk reporting and lack of capital efficiency. Regulatory risk seen as a major risk in both market, though, in the Indian market lack of regulation is the issue whereas in the UK insurance market lack of clarity in insurance regulation has been emphasised. From intuitional theory and strategic change perspective, the research presents cross-country comparative case studies highlighting four emerging ERM strategies based on the different state of development and maturity of companies: ‘Rudimentary’, ‘Anticipatory’, ‘Resilient’ and ‘Transformatory’ strategies. The case studies highlight the issues within the two insurance companies both internally and externally in a nascent and a mature market. Before companies can adopt a transformatory strategy, both companies require a fundamental understanding of strategic change that eventually can pave the way to good risk governance. Adopting the cognitive lens of strategic change will not only enhance company specific risk-based capabilities but it will improve industry risk-based capabilities through development of professional competence.