Rachel Grant, Risk All-Stars

What is your educational background?

I earned my CPCU and ARM designations while working as a broker in the first part of my career and earned my BA in Risk Management while working at Wells Fargo in the corporate risk and insurance management department.

Did you know you wanted to go into the risk profession?

If not, what was your journey to get here? Yes.

How long have you been working in the risk profession?

27 years

Has managing risk changed over the course of your career? If so, how?

Yes. I would say that technology has driven a lot of change in the management of risk. As technology platforms have evolved, we’ve moved from more tedious and cumbersome analytic approaches to more sophisticated approaches focusing more on data collection and integrity and using those elements in predictive analytics, modeling, and forecasting. This evolution allows us to dive deeper into trends and take a more efficient and effective approach to reducing the cost of risk and mitigating and preventing losses from occurring. Additionally, there has been a greater emphasis on enterprise risk, focusing on the marriage between insurable risk exposures and operational risk management. I have always been an insurable risk management professional, but in my organization, there has been an increased emphasis on integrating that with the role of operational risk.

What advice would you give to someone who is about to start their career in the risk profession?

Risk management is not always easy and straightforward; it requires specialized skills and the ability to adapt and evolve. If someone wants to undertake a career in risk management — be it insurable risk or operational risk — they must be resilient in the face of change because circumstances can evolve at a moment’s notice.