AIRMIC's special interest in 21st Century risk

AIRMIC has realigned its Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to tackle emerging 2ist century risks highlighted by its members in the association's turn-of-millennium survey. Reacting to the survey results, AIRMIC has tasked its SIGs with looking at the chief future threats -stress, e-commerce, loss of reputation, litigation, mergers and acquisitions - in relation to their specialisms:

• A new e-Commerce SIG has been formed to handle the growing IT and internet-trading arena. AIRMIC has combined its previous health & safety, environmental and employers' liability SIGs to form a Liability SIG, which will cover stress.
• The working party which created AIRMIC's guide to integrated risk management (published at the 1999 AIRMIC Conference) has been invited to form a Corporate Governance SIG, which will consider the implications of industry consolidation and factors affecting shareholder value.
• AIRMIC is also planning major summer seminars to debate and consider the topics of stress and e-commerce. The stress seminar will be held in conjunction with the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) and the Institute of Risk Management (IRM). The seminar on Stress - the Emerging Risk - will be held on 4 July at the Royal College of Surgeons, London WC2.
• Stress was highlighted as the No. 1 "emerging risk" of the 2ist century. E-commerce was a close second in the findings on future threats. The survey also showed that there is no expectation that risks will significantly reduce for 2ist century society or organisations - with the exception of terrorism.
• The growing threat to organisations of increased levels of stress among employees was the main emerging risk concern for UK risk managers in the survey. Almost 90 per cent (88%) of respondents felt that stress would increase as a risk factor for their organisations in the future. Stress was also the third most important risk identified as facing society at large after genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and e-commerce. With few risk managers surveyed having a business connection with GMOs, its risk importance to individual businesses was rated very low.
• E-commerce, the newest opportunity facing UK businesses, not surprisingly drew a high response as a "risk" area -both positive and negative. It will require good professional risk management to realise the advantages. The positioning of e-commerce, and IT malfunction and misuse as key emerging risks may also reflect the dependence of the modern business world on IT.
• AIRMIC chairman Mark Butterworth commented: "Our survey provides a fresh insight into the changing face of modern risk. Stress and e-commerce appear to be issues of general concern but the results also indicate a growing need for a risk management focus on specific areas. For organisations, in areas such as reputation, IT and litigation; for society, in areas such as climate change, environmental pollution and GMOs.
• "Above all, the survey underlines the all-important need for 2ist century companies to underpin their activities with a fully integrated corporate governance system."
• The survey asked AIRMIC members to grade 24 risks according to the importance to their organisation, and also to society in general. Respondents were also asked to predict if the risks would increase or decrease in the coming year. "Emerging risks" were established based on their level of importance and expected rate of increase.
• Based on level of importance, the loss of reputation is ahead of all other risks for the organisations of UK risk managers, topping listings with an 80 per cent rating. This mirrors the past two AIRMIC annual surveys that placed reputational risk as the No. i. concern for UK companies. A high proportion of respondents (62.5%) also stated that reputational risk would increase in the future.
• Extreme weather conditions came into the top ten emerging risks facing both organisations and society, while pollution, although ninth in the list of emerging risks facing organisations, jumped to fourth place for its emerging risk to society. Mobile phones, despite being viewed by many as a potential bane of the 2ist century, drew a low rating for emerging risk in both organisation and society assessments.