The risk community is fully engaged in the pandemic response, with many reporting that their investment in risk management and expertise has paid off. And in a report published this week by the Institute of Risk Management, both the positive factors and realistic concerns about the ongoing crisis are revealed by over 1,000 risk managers from amongst the IRM's membership.

"The role of risk management is to help our organisations achieve their objectives in an uncertain world. In 2020 that world was turned upside down as a long observed, although perhaps not sufficiently managed, risk – global pandemic – became a live issue," chairman of the Institute, Iain Wright states in the report, whose aims were to find out how risk management functions were responding to the crisis, whether their plans were working, had proved helpful to their response, and how this situation might affect the development of the profession.

Wright foresees a sharper focus on resilience and on strategic risk management for the future, but issues this stark warning: "We mustn’t allow the magnitude of the current crisis to obscure the other major (and interconnected) risks that we all face. We still need to tackle climate change, cyber risk, supply chain disruption, economic and geopolitical volatility, to mention just a few. The IRM, the IOR and our wider global risk management community stand ready and confident to lead the response."


Readers may download the IRM's unique report here: https://www.theirm.org/media/8903/irm-covid-response-survey-initial-report-final.pdf



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