fastTrack scheme for new risk managers set to go live
Next month Airmic launches fastTrack to help less experienced risk managers develop their skills. As well as young people starting out on their careers, it is open to anyone who is new to the discipline after changing jobs or professionals such as company secretaries and lawyers who have had risk added to their responsibilities. The fastTrack chair Kate Wallin spoke to Mark Baylis.
Kate Wallin typifies the young, bright and ambitious professional that represents the future of Airmic and risk management in the UK. At the age of 28 she already has Europe-wide responsibility for risk management as part of the US-based risk management corporate department at the international hotel group Marriott; she is keen to develop her skills so that she can make further progress in her career.
“I remember my first Airmic meeting where nearly everyone was older than me. It was a daunting experience.”
Although an admirer of what Airmic has achieved, she believes there are greater opportunities to engage with people early in their careers. “I remember my first Airmic meeting where nearly everyone was older and more experienced than me. It was a daunting experience. The general feeling is that Airmic is good for the well-seasoned risk manager, but I just don’t think it’s appealing to the younger, less experienced risk manager,” she says.
She approached Airmic CEO John Hurrell about setting up a group for younger practitioners and anyone who has come to risk management later in their careers. He was receptive, and so fastTrack was born.
What is fastTrack?
fastTrack is currently overseen by a small group of members, all in their twenties or early thirties. The aim is to develop a “comfortable environment for people to learn and explore,” she says.
The plan is to include a programme of events so that relatively inexperienced practitioners can learn from experts, both from within the membership and beyond. There will be social events, a tailored educational syllabus and an extension of the current mentoring scheme, whilst a dedicated area of the Airmic website has already gone live pre-launch.
fastTrack is overseen by the association’s Learning and Development committee, chaired by Airmic deputy chair Patrick Smith. Exactly how fastTrack develops is, of course, hard to predict; it will depend on those who join it and the opportunities they wish to exploit. It is possible to envisage a semi-autonomous mini-association developing, drawing on the parent body for help and expertise but with a life and priorities of its own.
Wallin believes that there will be exciting job opportunities open to risk practitioners in the future, but that the demands are already changing rapidly.
“The skills required to get to the top of our profession will be quite different in ten years’ time from what they have been up to now. Part of our role in developing fastTrack will be to identify what it will take and to point our members in the right direction,” she says.
“I believe Airmic to be the leading risk management association in Europe and does an awful lot for its membership. But to be successful for another fifty years we have to wake up to what people will want in the future. No organisation in Europe reaches out to the new generation of risk managers.”
However, equally important is the growing cohort of experienced, older professionals in other disciplines who assume responsibility for risk and insurance or who convert. Wallin hopes that fastTrack will be just as appealing to them, and believes that their wider business experience could be of great value to the group.
One priority will be to help risk managers gain key business skills such as negotiation and business-literacy that are necessary to wield influence. This is something the association has already been plugging for several years, and it can only become even more important as the pace of business life continues to quicken.
“You can have all the technical skill in the world, but you have to be able to explain it in terms that people understand. Things have to be pertinent these days,” says Wallin.
She, meanwhile, has enrolled onto the mentorship scheme with former Airmic chair Nicola Harvey. “Airmic is a great resource, and young risk managers can learn a heck of a lot from people like Nicola. I would like to think we can teach them a thing or two as well,” she adds.
fastTrack welcomes any member new to risk management, regardless of their age. If you are interested please email