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Risk managers are gathering in Boston next week for a RIMS conference focused on enterprise risk management (ERM). CFO Brew, with fresh Dunkin’ coffee in hand, will be there to hear from leading risk professionals on a variety of risk management topics.
Ahead of the event, Kristen Peed, RIMS board vice president and head of corporate risk at Sequoia, spilled the tea on the importance of viewing enterprise risks holistically and the biggest risks that professionals are thinking about right now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the top risks that risk pros are thinking about?
AI keeps coming up a ton, [with questions like] what's the best way to use it? How do you put parameters around it? Where are those guardrails? And how can risk managers engage with other leaders at their organization to help put together those guardrails…to make sure that we're not running into areas that we don't want to? I think that that's really the biggest risk that keeps popping up, not only at my company, but also at other risk managers’ companies.
Who are the other players within the organization and other management teams that risk managers are pulling together to talk about AI?
Absolutely your IT department, specifically your chief information security officer. We engage a lot with our chief legal officers or our general counsels at companies. You certainly need to be pulling in…the CFO to understand how these risks can impact your organization, and your CEO. It goes all the way to the top because you need those C-level execs to set the tone for risk management and get their buy-in before you can execute on any effective ERM program.
The ERM Conference website mentions that ERM is growing and gaining visibility. Can you describe why that is?
I think it's actually the evolution of our position at the company from being a very transactional position to being more of a strategic position. In the past, risk managers were thought of as somebody who just bought insurance to be reactive when something bad happened. And now, we're able to sit at the table with the leaders and be one of the thought leaders at the company around risk and how to strategically understand risk, [and] educate your C-Suite about risk tolerance and [to] make the best decisions for when you want to transfer risk, when you want to accept the risk, when you want to mitigate risk.