Taking the Long View
Posted on April 13th, 2010 by Katina »Permalink
We’d like to keep this week’s posts roll’n with a great piece from CFO that goes in-depth with the CFO of USAA, to see how her actuarial background informs her work as a CFO. There whole piece is worth a look (USAA managed to have its best-ever revenue year in 2009), but there were a few points that really grabbed our attention. First is the way that Matus’s experience as an actuary contributed to an ability to take the long view on day-to-day business decisions – not necessarily what was best for this quarter, but several quarters out. A key part of Matus’s work has been moderating between different functions, like sales and finance, to make key business decisions – and she says she doesn’t let a board meeting go by where risk isn’t at the top of the agenda. USAA’s model is a unique one, because it’s member-owned, which Matus says gives them an easier time taking the long view in lean times, but we at Approva see a lot of benefit for all kinds of companies in bringing different functions together to talk risk and business.
In the same vein, Francine McKenna’s got a doozy of a post up on top-down approaches to risk and why they’re far from ideal (okay, her language is more interesting, but we’ll let her have the say on it). She makes a pretty compelling case on the problems with letting risk assessments be the sole domain of the C-suite, which makes sense, considering all the non-C-suite spots that businesses are exposed to risk.
Yet another reason why cross-functional evaluations of risk are a great idea – and why real-time visibility into the transactions where mistakes and fraud actually happen is pretty crucial.
