Traditionally, organizational risk managers focused on cost containment, aiming to attain the highest level of protection at the lowest possible cost. More recently, the growing embrace of enterprise risk management is prompting organizations to look at risk management as a source of value creation and competitive advantage. The leading enterprise risk management (ERM) frameworks - ISO 31000 and COSO - present compelling rationale but leave the "how-to" operational questions largely unanswered. Building on the idea of "risk profiling," Banasiewicz presents his vision for how the promise of ERM can be turned into an operational reality by thoughtfully leveraging quantitative & qualitative, numeric & text data. He outlines a step-by-step process for transforming readily available and informationally-rich, though not always well-utilized data into objective estimates of downside and upside risks. The overall focus of Risk Profiling of Organizations is on showing how otherwise diverse organizational exposures can be looked at as different parts of a single whole.

Risk management has become a key factor of successful organizations. Despite risk management's importance, outdated and inappropriate ideas about how to manage risk dominate. This book challenges existing paradigms of risk management and provides readers with new concepts and tools for the current dynamic risk management environment. The framework for the book is a series of questions that allows for an interesting and thought-provoking look at current ideas and forward-looking concepts. This book, intended for senior managers, directors, risk managers, students of risk management, and all others who need to be concerned about risk management and strategy, provides a solid base for not only understanding current best practice in risk management, but also the conceptual tools for exploiting emerging risk management technologies, metrics, regulations, and ideas. The central thesis is that risk management is a value-adding activity that all types of organizations, public, private as well as not-for-profit, can use for competitive advantage and maximum effectiveness.

Most academic and policy commentary represents adverse selection as a severe problem in insurance, which should always be deprecated, avoided or minimised. This book gives a contrary view. It details the exaggeration of adverse selection in insurers' rhetoric and insurance economics, and presents evidence that in many insurance markets, adverse selection is weaker than most commentators suggest. A novel arithmetical argument shows that from a public policy perspective, 'weak' adverse selection can be a good thing. This is because a degree of adverse selection is needed to maximise 'loss coverage', the expected fraction of the population's losses which is compensated by insurance. This book will be valuable for those interested in public policy arguments about insurance and discrimination: academics (in economics, law and social policy), policymakers, actuaries, underwriters, disability activists, geneticists and other medical professionals.