Five minutes with: Parima president Franck Baron

What are you thinking about right now?

I am in my third week in Europe so I want to go back home and see my family, and from a professional standpoint I want to ensure that I have enough time to meet with my colleagues and new people and, of course, to make sure that people are aware of the new risk management association in Asia – Parima.

How do you like to spend your free time?

It is a weird concept for a risk manager in a growing company to have free time, but when I do I spend it with my family. I travel so much and when I have free time it’s about spending it with them. I do travel with them, by the way, but spending time with them makes me happy.

Tell us something no one would know about you

In my spare time I’m a DJ and I was the DJ at the Ferma Forum party in October 2013. Don’t think of me just as a risk manager because I also play music. I have a very good musical background, a good mix of genres, including the brand new stuff. You can picture me as being like the Calvin Harris of risk managers.

What are you most proud of?

On a personal standpoint, I have been able to live in many countries around the world with my family, so now my children are international citizens and the world is at their disposal. They are extremely open minded about language, religion and culture. In France, we are quite proud of our country and we think it’s the centre of the world.

Professionally, I am proud that I have been able to pay back the risk management community in supporting a lot of young people when they started their career. When I started out in the risk management field, I had an extremely good mentor, and I am just trying to pay back risk management by supporting the youngsters.

What wisdom would you share with risk managers?

It is all about trying. You will always read about the great successes and you never hear about failures, but this is important as it’s how we learn to succeed. When I met with the founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, he told me about the range of failures he’d had and it’s an important lesson for anyone hoping to succeed and break down barriers in their profession.

What is your most treasured possession?

My values. I try to ensure that I stay true to myself. I am proud that I have stayed in line with my beliefs and values. At the same time, I can relate to the things said by Bertrand Piccard at the Ferma Forum; I like to challenge and change the way things are done. I try to provide people with a decent degree of passion and a capability to think out of the box, so these are two things I treasure.

Franck Baron, group general manager, international SOS and president of Parima (Pan Asia Risk & Insurance Management Association)