An interactive Zurich workshop at the Airmic annual conference today - featuring Intercontinental Hotel Group as a case study - showed delegates how to navigate complex global risks to maximise growth opportunities.
The session, led by John Scott, Chief Risk Officer for Zurich's Global Corporate business, took delegates through a number of scenarios using the Zurich Risk Room tool to establish the best investment opportunities for a fictitious company ‘Hospitality Services Corp' - for example which countries are the new BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) with similar risk and growth opportunities.
John Scott said, "The great thing about the Zurich Risk Room tool is its ability to visualise multiple risks and play out ‘what if' scenarios by varying the risk - something that is almost impossible to do if we were to read the many reports on country risks that might land on our desks. The tool is so intuitive it is like a playing a 3d game of chess while all of the risk data built into the tool is publicly available and regularly updated."
John Ludlow, SVP of Risk Management at Intercontinental Hotels Group, talked about how the company used the Zurich Risk Room to identify the second tier emerging markets to expand into. It helped to narrow down the choice of countries to 22 and just five hotel development risk factors.
He said, "The Zurich Risk Room gave our strategy team a risk management lens on our decision making and sat at the heart of our learning. It is not a panacea but made analysis easier and faster allowing us to rapidly and accurately build understanding in complex and dynamic environments."
The Zurich Risk Room is a fact-based management tool designed to facilitate strategic decision making and risk mitigation in the face of a constantly shifting global business environment. It is comprised of 66 risk factors spanning 150 countries. For more information about the Zurich Risk Room visit www.zurich.com/main/insight/wef/zurichriskroom.htm |
