Get a read on risk.

We aren’t technically in a recession (that we know of), but it’s not looking good!

Troubled economic times make your clients and prospects price shop; that increased competition is the icing on the cake for brokers who are also struggling with the economy. A slight change in approach can go a long way toward growing brokerage revenues and weathering the economic storm.

As discussed in one of our recent posts, reputational risk has become a top priority in recent years with the explosive adoption of social media.

We’ve all seen the Shell smear campaign come across our news feed, or the overnight meltdown witnessed on Applebee’s Facebook page after an employee was fired for posting a customer’s receipt. Yet we’ve also seen positive outcomes: increased communication between corporations and their customers, sharing of campaigns that strike a chord with consumers to their entire networks, and even visible praise from those who have had their questions and concerns dealt with in a satisfactory manner.  

Tom Cooper is currently an Assistant Professor at Memorial University in the area of strategic management. As a member of ClearRisk Board of Advisors, Tom’s research and blogging focuses primarily on the interplay between strategy, risk and compliance as well as their effects on corporate responsibility. ‘Strategic Risk as an Element of Operational Risk’ is the fourth in this ongoing series.

Although the Basel II guidance on strategic risk is regulatory driven, this definition of strategic risk provides little assistance on how strategic risk might be identified and analyzed. There is also considerable potential overlap with the standard Basel II definition of operational risk, which is: “the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events”.