The Capital Market Authority  in collaboration with AM Best &Milliman organized a workshop on Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) as part of its endeavours to enhance awareness of the employees of the insurance sector on the various issues.

Ahmed Ali Al Maamari, Acting Director General of Insurance Supervision  said on the workshop that  the successful risk management culture contributes to sustainable and long term growth and more companies are recognizing the importance of enterprise risk management in past recent years. He added that  ERM has become a more important strategic consideration as well as enabling better informed and more confident decision making.

He added that  the insurance market needs to pay high attention to the enterprise risk management. “Many insurers in Oman and even in the GCC region still view ERM as just a compliance exercise or rating agency requirement, failing  to recognize that their ERM programmes are also meant to generate significant business value.”

On the importance of  application of ERM standards he said  companies with a mature approach of risk management can achieve a competitive advantage and that because of having better performance management, capital adequacy and active stakeholder management  who are well informed and confident that risk are understood in a fast changing environment and better quality control process.

Al Maamari said there is a need to integrate the corporate goals and building a risk awareness culture at all level and linking risk information to strategic planning and decision making stressing the importance of placing risk management in the corporate structure at high level from the board to the executive management.

He urged the insurance companies in Oman to develop human resources capacity and knowledge in risk management in line with  modern information databases., and develop their internal risk measurement  and procedures using more sophisticated risk metrics.

Al Maamare said ERM has become a company-wide integrated collaborative between the board, executive management and risk management including legal, compliance and audit. He added  the role of regulators is  to participate in enhancing the awareness about the need to  and importance of ERM, but no doubt in the near future we have to impose  a mandatory principles and standards and the companies need to prepare for that.

The workshop covered topics on types of risks, management and risk mitigation methods on the companies in the emerging markets including the Omani market.