by Lawrence Cunningham and Arvin Maskin
From left to right: Lawrence Cunningham and Arvin Maskin. Photos courtesy of the authors.
Enterprise risk management (“ERM”) and corporate governance are two sides of the same coin, being united by the importance of relevant decision-makers acquiring, interpreting and disseminating intelligence about risk and oversight. The goal of ERM is to help corporate managers visualize, interpret, contextualize and prioritize various forms of risk input in a timely and objective manner, and to convert it to insightful and actionable intelligence to enhance the quality, reliability and transparency of corporate decision-making and board oversight (“corporate governance”). This modern-day “distant early warning” system attempts to preempt crisis-level events and mitigate the impact of unexpected or unavoidable occurrences of consequence, while seizing on opportunities to be innovative, competitive, and resilient.