At home and abroad

One area often overlooked when firms are trying to establish risk management procedures is the co-ordination of such procedures into regional or overseas offices.

It is usually a head-office initiative to review and implement risk management procedures, but this doesn't always mean that, once agreed, they are properly rolled out to all offices.

Therefore, when looking to devise a risk management programme, it is important to ensure complete cohesion across the breadth of the firm.

To do this, a firm will need to appoint a designated risk management co-ordinator.

The co-ordinator will need to liaise regularly with all the other offices to decide exactly what their issues are and where they are having problems.

In-depth analysis should be carried out in relation to claims made against particular offices over at least the past three years.

Once the co-ordinator has this information, he should look to introduce the separate issues of the regional or overseas offices into the overall risk management strategy.

However, it is important to remember that risk management procedures are only as good as a firm's employees.

Everyone, from the managing partner to the administrative staff, needs to know their particular areas of responsibility.

They will also need to be given specific examples of where they are at risk of a claim being made against the firm and those areas of risk that are pertinent to their areas of work.

Therefore, any changes relating to risk management procedures need to be rolled out and explained fully throughout all the offices.

Training also needs to be consistent throughout all the offices.

It is not enough to hand out a risk management booklet in the hope that everyone reads it thoroughly and understands it.

It is far more effective to speak to each individual and ensure that they are properly trained, to a head office standard, in any areas about which they are unsure.

A blanket approach to risk management is not the complete answer, and this is especially true in the case of regional and overseas offices.

What might seem the answer to the main office's problems could be irrelevant to other offices within the firm.

Ensure that all procedures, while compliant throughout the whole firm, are pertinent and relevant to each individual office.

More importantly, ensure that the risk management co-ordinator is constantly in touch with all offices and that everyone knows who this person is should they need to report any problems.

This column was prepared by AFP Consulting, a division of Alexander Forbes Risk Services