Terry Fleming, who takes over as president of the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) next year, talks to lloyds.com about his plans for the influential North American risk manager’s association
RIMS president-elect Terry Fleming is director of risk management for Montgomery County, Maryland - a position he has held since 1988. But he doesn’t think that his background as a public sector risk manager will give him a skewed perspective as RIMS president. “Public sector risk managers make up a good number of RIMS members and I won’t be the first public sector or local government risk manager to become president of RIMS,” he explains.
Fleming, who’s also represented PRIMA, the Public Risk Management Association, believes that public and private sector organisations face similar day-to-day risk management issues. “We have the same workers’ comp issues, the same auto exposures - Montgomery has 5,000 vehicles in its fleet,” he points out. “We have general liability exposures and all the ‘trip and fall’ risks you see in the private sector, for example.
“Of course, in the public sector we are not so focused on the profit motive: educating students, putting out fires and catching criminals don’t lend themselves to the profit motive very well.” Fleming believes that public sector risk managers’ experience adds to RIMS collective wisdom. “We have a very strong emphasis on corporate governance because transparency is so important in our ‘business’,” he says. “The public ask a lot of questions.”
The traffic is two way though, he acknowledges. “The private sector has a lot to offer public service risk managers. For example, last year we were building a new courthouse and were faced with a $1.3m bill from the developer for the architect’s E&O cover. After talking with one of my peers who happens to work in a private company I was able to cover the exposure with an owner’s protective policy that cost $300,000.”
It is an auspicious time to take over the presidency. RIMS marks its 60th anniversary in 2010 and it will be a year-long celebration that includes the annual convention in Boston in April. Apart from the anniversary and the day-to-day issues raised by RIMS’ numerous hardworking committees, Fleming expects to be looking at some specific issues during his tenure.
One is the regulatory and legislative changes that could affect the insurance industry - and therefore his members. “We’ll be watching the progress of the Optional Federal Charter as well as the Non-admitted (surplus lines) Reform Act. We also support the proposed introduction of the Federal Office of Insurance Information,” he told lloyds.com. “So there are lots of opportunities for us to get involved with Congress.”
Another priority for Fleming is to drive forward RIMS’ international strategy. “We want to be able to offer RIMS products and resources to US companies with international operations. And to extend risk management education into different parts of the world, for example, in Latin America or Asia and areas of the world where risk management is not practiced effectively. We’ll be looking to developing conferences and seminars to that end,” he says.
Fleming says he intends to increase the dialogue between members and encourage more peer-to-peer benchmarking within RIMS: “Some newer risk managers can be intimidated by more experienced members. We have a wealth of talent among membership and we can do a lot more to share that intellectual capital,” he says. “I’ve found that whenever I’m in any room full of risk managers I always learn something.”
Risk management has moved further into the limelight in the last eventful 18 months. Fleming believes the profile of risk managers themselves has improved as a result. The banking crisis brought into focus the fact that the human element of risk management was overlooked, he says: “Greed and an over-reliance on computer models pushed risk managers aside: but now there is a renewed focus on the risk manager.”
What sort of profile does Lloyd’s have with RIMS members? “Lloyd’s has a very strong profile with RIMS. It is a vibrant insurance market and is the market of choice for very many risk managers operating in the public and private sector,” Fleming affirms.
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