Fresh from meetings in the City with his company's insurers, Dick Sorensen, group risk manager at global paper giant SAPPI, is troubled. "When you see underwriters and you talk to them about risk management, they say 'that's very good, but how many losses have you had in the past five years?' They're interested in statistics. They take out a slip of paper and give you a score. It's a rather shallow exercise." Apparently on a one-man mission to sell the benefits of looking at business management processes to the City, Sorensen is to some extent succeeding. "I'm trying to get them to the point where I'm saying you've got to look much deeper and ask how you can have confidence that something won't happen that's going to be detrimental to the business and result in an incident that leads to an insurance claim. It's taking a bit of time, but it is working." This is typical evangelizing zeal from the Australian-born South African, a former racing driver and now a pivotal figure in the management of all things risk at SAPPI. In the course of recounting to Business Standards his use of the Common Audit Protocol (CAP~(TM)) to help manage risk, he reveals he is "a devoted capitalist", has strong views on consultancy and certification, an interest in "innovation and thinking differently" and believes in being flexible and pragmatic in management.
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