In short

• While there is no one definition, experts agree that risk intelligence takes a broader, more forward-thinking and opportunity-centric approach to managing risk.
• In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment, managing risk should be embedded in an organisation’s culture.
• Insurers are considering more flexible ways to manage their own and their clients’ risk.

There is no single definition of risk intelligence.

American financier Leo Tilman describes it as ‘the strategic reincarnation of risk management’. David Ingram, executive vice president of Willis Re, sees it as ‘the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience in matters involving risk and uncertainty’.

For Dr Gavriel Schneider, CEO of Risk 2 Solution Group and program director of Australian Catholic University’s Psychology of Risk Program, risk intelligence is ‘a living skill and applied attribute that enables better decision-making to proactively embrace opportunity and manage potentially negative outcomes’.

 ‘If it’s not a living skill, it doesn’t move with the times and we only have the ability to manage in hindsight,’ says Schneider.

‘We were very purposeful in including that in our own definition, along with opportunity-centrism. The concept of risk carries no suggestion that it’s limited to things that can go wrong, yet we’ve adopted a protectionist mindset which focuses on the negatives, rather than balancing them with things that could work to our advantage.’

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