NC State's ERM Roundtable Date set for Charlotte

Save the date for NC State's ERM Roundtable, to be held on Friday March 12, 2010, at the Westin Charlotte uptown. Instead of the usual two-hour forum, there will be two 90-minute panel discussions surrounding a networking break, and the event will run from 8:30 until noon EST.

This session allows the Charlotte business community access to NC State's renowned ERM Institute, without the nearly 3-hour drive to Raleigh, and is highly recommended to finance and compliance executives in all industries.

The first panel, titled "ERM: Lessons Learned", will feature the following Panelists:

Susie Wilson – Reynolds American Corporation
Dan Wall – RBC Centura
Marshall Croom – Lowe’s Corporation
Dave Landsittel – COSO Chairman

The second panel, titled "ERM: Directions for the Future", will feature the following Panelists:

Steve Dreyer – Standard & Poor’s
David Fox – KBR Inc.
Trent Gazzaway – Grant Thornton
Jim Traut – H.J. Heinz Corporation

For more information or to register, see NC State web site.

NC State ERM Roundtable - GREAT Session from David Fox of KBR

Attended this morning's session in Raleigh for NC State's ERM Roundtable and had the pleasure to hear some thought-provoking ideas from both Dr. Mark Beasley (NC State) and David Fox of KBR in Houston. Thank you to Oversight Systems for their sponsorship of the event.

More on David's presentation later today, but for now here are a couple of resources that we know will be of interest to the ERM and Internal Audit community(s).

1) AICPA's Research on the Current State of Enterprise Risk Oversight, published April 2009.

Research by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and NC State ERM Initiative finds that while the volume and complexities of risks are increasing extensively, risk oversight is fairly immature, ad hoc, and the source of frustration for over 700 executives surveyed. Some great factoids from the survey...

• Over 1/3 of organizations surveyed note they were caught off guard by an Operational Surprise either "Extensively" or a "A Great Deal" in the last five years. Another 1/3 of organizations faced a "Moderate" operational surprise.
  
• Almost half (47%) stated that they are "Not at All Satisfied" or "Minimally" satisfied with the nature and extent of reporting of key risk indicators to senior executives regarding the entity's top risk exposure.
  

But

• 44% of organizations surveyed have no enterprise-wide risk management process in place and no plans to implement one.
  
• An additional 18% without ERM processes in place indicate they are currently investigating the concept, but have made no decisions about implementing ERM.

Said in a sentence or two...Firms have been bitten by risk, they are not satisfied with executive and board-level reporting about risk, but they're not doing much about it. No wonder ERM is so hard!

Read more about Enterprise Risk Management at NC State's very thoughtful and thought-provoking Portal.

ERM Resources from NC State

During the last several months, I have been attending the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) roundtables at NC State University in Raleigh. These ERM roundtables provide thought-provoking Continuing Professional Education (CPE) and networking opportunities for Governance, Risk and Compliance professionals on a regional and national level. Previous presentations are archived on the web at: http://mgt.ncsu.edu/erm/Roundtables.php

The purpose of the ERM program is multi-dimensional. They aspire to provide outreach (through the roundtables), research (through an outstanding web portal), and undergraduate and graduate education.

Speakers this fall included Jim Traut, Director of ERM at H.J. Heinz, and Drew Zavatsky, Office of Financial Management from the State of Washington, and the February roundtable will be in Charlotte NC. Steve Dreyer of Standard & Poors (S&P) will be presenting on their use and evaluation of ERM as part of S&P's ratings process.

Continuous Auditing combines more frequent risk assessment with more frequent and in-depth control assessment. Since ERM represents leading edge practices in risk assessment, we will continue to identify opportunities to link continuous controls monitoring to ERM, to provide more data-driven risk assessment.

Stay tuned for more information in 2009 about these initiatives.

Joe Oringel
Charlotte, NC
Visual Risk IQ