Executive Insight – Rise of the Chief Risk Officer

Revolutions, rogue traders and roller coaster markets have one thing in common: They make risk professionals fashionable. While the fourth quarter of 2011 will see bloodletting in the front offices of many high street banks, risk professionals will sit comfortably and benefit from what is now being coined as “The Rise of the Chief Risk Officer (CRO)”.  As globalization gathered steam in the early 1990s, corporations began to realize that managing their downside had a huge upside and so began to anoint executives with the remit of ensuring their organizations had the appropriate risk controls. This innovation has taken hold of the global corporate community with breathtaking speed. In 1993 James Lam was hired by GE Capital as the world’s first CRO. Since then the role has spread to all four corners of the earth, across industries and sectors, and is now being considered the fourth C in the C-suite.