Robust risk management efforts are increasingly critical in a volatile global economy. Today's organizations face a growing number of risks that can affect their ability to be competitive and remain a viable entity. With new regulatory and governance requirements on the horizon - the SEC's proposed Disclosure Rules (linking compensation and new Board oversight of risk management) and the impending Shareholder's Bill of Rights (creating a new Board-level risk committee), organizations are under heightened scrutiny to address and assume new responsibilities for risk management.

Before the economic downturn, many organizations believed they had established enterprise risk management (ERM) programs or functions and thus had established the appropriate infrastructure to anticipate and manage risk. In the wake of the evolving crisis, however, as new and unexpected risks emerged, numerous organizations saw they had taken just preliminary steps in an ERM initiative. The focus was on compliance more often than efforts to managing risk across the enterprise.