Airmic, whose three-day annual conference runs until today in Harrogate, has released a boardroom edition of its Roads to Revolution report. The flagship research – written by Cass Business School, City of London University on behalf of the association – provides boards and senior executives with resilience advice they can tap particularly in the context of the digital age.
“Achieving and maintaining resilience in the digital era is a huge challenge and requires significant board-level support,” stated Airmic deputy chief executive and technical director Julia Graham. “The digital era is fundamentally altering the basic principles of resilience. Constant reinvention is now necessary for success and that’s a vital message for boardrooms.”
According to the resource, which outlines Airmic’s resilience and transformation model, the challenges of the digital age are far broader than the issues surrounding cybersecurity. A comprehensive and coherent structure, the model is designed to enable organisations to embrace advances in technology.
In the association’s view, businesses will have to reskill and introduce new mechanisms to ensure effective governance, monitoring, strategic leadership, and legitimacy. This comes as, according to Airmic, underlying business and organisational dynamics have been “profoundly” altered by the digital revolution.
“This report distils our research into the key messages for board members,” said Graham. “Resilience is not an end game, it’s a constant process, and it’s important that the risk community continually reinforces this message at the very top of their organisations.”
Meanwhile, in a separate development, the association has also produced a guide for independent non-executive directors appointed to the boards of captive insurance companies.
Developed in partnership with broking giant Aon, the resource covers topics such as the benefits of an independent view on the board of a captive as well as best practice in areas like performance measurement.
Commenting on the document’s launch, Graham noted: “This practical guide suggests a range of simple but really important steps that can be taken to ensure captive company board oversight is fit for purpose.
“Captive governance will continue to come under scrutiny as tax authorities maintain a keen interest. However, even without a compelling regulatory reason, this guide makes good business sense as captives grow in sophistication and complexity.”