The past 18 months have been marked by significant disruptive risks with the Covid-19 pandemic presenting an ongoing multi-dimensional crisis with health, economic, social, and cultural impacts. At the same time, organizations face a rising focus on environmental, social and governance issues, as well as a rapid acceleration of existing trends such as digitalization.
Against this backdrop, Marsh McLennan and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) tapped into survey data and insights from experienced directors to explore the impacts on risk oversight. Through a series of articles, we explore evolutions in risk oversight structures, approaches, and processes. The articles cover:
- How the expanding risk agenda is distributed across existing structure and committees and explored whether more boards will be establishing a risk committee.
- Four areas for the board to focus on in considering organizational resilience as part of effective risk oversight.
- How boards can foster courage to increase risk visibility and enable new forms of risk analysis and exploratory dialogue on issues for which there may not yet be a consensus
- How boards that become “digital-by-default” due to mobility restriction can retain and enhance essential aspects of agility to reinvigorate risk oversight processes and decision making.
- How boards can embrace the concept of “healthy societies” as a framework for people risk oversight and creating a sustainable organizational culture.
Marsh McLennan and NACD thank the following NACD members for sharing their insights in the development of this series: Anthony Anderson, Samuel DiPiazza, Roy Dunbar, Cynthia Jamison, Shelley Leibowitz, Sara Mathew, Jan Tighe, and Suzanne Vautrinot.
