Risk manager of the year: ‘exciting time to be involved’

Brendan Maseti, the 2017 Irmsa Awards Risk Manager of the Year, started his career in 1998 in the safety, health and environmental risk management space where he spent five years in the rail industry. Says Maseti: “I moved on to logistics, aviation, maritime and then mining. The first years of my working life were focused on safety, health and environmental risk and then security and commercial insurance.

“With the second King report in 2004 I made a change to start looking at business holistically and how to manage the integrated risk management process in a company.

“As the development of risk management was driven by new codes of practices and standards that were published, I first had to understand them before adopting the changes within the company.

“Today, I am group risk manager at Lonmin Platinum.”

ENABLING TOOL

Maseti, says he has been fortunate to experience the growth of risk management from a largely negative legislative-driven scenario to where it has become accepted as an enabling tool and driver of business strategy.

“With the advent of ISO 31000 and King 3 and 4, a broader understanding of risk in the context of uncertainty, which can be positive or negative, has developed.

“What organisations should be doing is to contextualise the risk in relation to their business, then develop processes based on the organisation’s objectives and strategy to understand the uncertainty they have to face.

“A good risk manager will understand the need to implement processes to better understand the uncertainty.

“For example, we use risk management effectively in scenario planning to better understand the key stakeholders, what the macro and micro environments are in which we will be working towards achieving our objectives, and understanding both the threats and opportunities associated with the risk.

“So, risk management started off by looking at the downside of risk from a regulatory and legislative compliance perspective, but today it is used as a competitive enabler to assist business.

“Another key mechanism, especially at Lonmin, has been the drive for proper stakeholder analysis to encourage the development of inclusivity without conflict or deadlocks.

“There has also been a growth in the understanding of what is risk appetite is and how to include it in your organisational performance in terms of risk tolerances. Today, the risk manager needs to be a lot more savvy in order to produce risk models and processes to better analyse the sources of risk and thereby improve decision making.

“I have also noticed that as business models and processes become more complex, risks are coming from nontraditional sources. For example, the threat of replacement of core products or services should be understood, analysed and monitored to prepare yourself in terms of your business model and processes, especially in your future focus.”

Maseti says today’s risk managers have to be better prepared to deal with all the aspects related to uncertainty.

However, he says it is an exciting time to be involved in risk, because risk management has come to the fore as a framework to encourage best business practice and how that translates into a means of assisting the organisation to achieve its set objectives and improve performance.

“Every responsible company understands what its risks are and how they are managed in a manner that incorporates good environmental, social and governance practices to ensure long-term performance advantages.”

A GOOD RISK MANAGER WILL UNDERSTAND THE NEED TO IMPLEMENT PROCESSES TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE UNCERTAINTY