Scandinavia – success through collaboration and ingenuity

It would be as wrong to generalise about ‘Scandinavians’ as it would be to generalise about ‘southern Europeans’. Yet there are important similarities and economic and social relationships between Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden that have helped to align their insurance industries and have meant that risk management has developed within them in parallel.

Perhaps the most important characteristic that organisations in these countries tend to share is a willingness to co-operate with companies from countries outside their own - a willingness that perhaps owes something to their shared histories and to the infl uence over centuries of powerful neighbours to the east, west and south. A second seemingly shared characteristic would be technical ingenuity. These qualities have helped Scandinavian manufacturers and service providers of all kinds to achieve great success all over the world. The need to develop a sophisticated
understanding of risk has been a natural consequence of this international success, while in recent years increased regulatory pressure at home and abroad and the changing nature of other existing and emerging risks have added to the pressure.

This report examines how effectively insurers, brokers and risk managers are addressing those risks, and considers the benefi ts enjoyed by organisations that have prioritised the development of risk management and implemented enterprise risk management programmes.

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