-
Risk management still has its weak spots, despite the valuable lessons banks learned from the financial crisis. Practitioners wonder if stopping the next blow-up is even a reasonable goal for the profession.
September 3 -
Perhaps, given the wild ride of the past decade, banking can learn something from aviation, an industry that has posted an impressive and improving safety record over a similar time span.
September 3 -
A majority of BankThink posts dedicated to risk assessment focus on tools, systems, agencies or legislation. Rarely do we talk about the people hired to implement them. Do you believe in risk managers?
July 30
With a summer of
But as recent remarks from some prominent
The folks over at the International Organization for Standardization 31000 Risk Management Standard
The general idea put forth by some commenters was that creativity often gets thrown to the wayside by many firms because there are too many unknowns associated with new tactics or systems.
"[Concern for risk] should stimulate further research and engineering into the unknown," one commenter noted. "However, once the masses get wind of generalizations, the intellectual proletariat, which is society as a whole rather than individually, is forced back down the evolutionary curve."
Still, others commenters argued, if properly executed, risk management and innovation were not mutually exclusive.
"If you look at tools used by innovators or by traditional risk managers, in essence, they are the same," one commenter wrote. "Sometimes they carry different words. But if you need to innovate, there's nothing wrong to use 'what if?', 'success modes and effects analysis', or 'common cause analysis.'"
And some participants were quick to point out there were just as dire consequences associated with dialing back on risk management for the sake of innovation.
"If we have no means of credibly predicting the unintended consequences of a course of action, then I believe it is false to claim to have conducted a professional risk assessment with respect to societal risk," one commenter posted. He went on to cite genetically modified crops as an example of innovation gone awry, writing they caused "super weeds and toxin-resistant insects to emerge" and led to an increased use of pesticides.
Another commenter dutifully noted, "It appears that an absence of concern or an absence of ongoing review and monitoring are the threats."
Do unyielding concerns for risk and stringent risk management systems inhibit innovation? Let us know in the comments section below.
Jeanine Skowronski is the deputy editor of BankThink. You can contact her at
