Risk award delivered to Australia Post for ‘provocative’ entry

An Australia Post manager has won a dream trip to the US thanks to a new award from RIMS, with an entry that will get risk managers talking.

Susie Jones, PostBreach manager of Australia Post, picked up The Risk Revolution Delegate Award, newly launched by the RIMS Australasia chapter, for the best ‘Thought Leadership Submission’.

The prize, sponsored by insurance broker Marsh, includes a trip to Philadelphia for the International RIMS Conference and Exhibition on 23-26 April 2017, plus a year of RIMS membership.

“I’m really excited,” Jones told StrategicRISK. “I was really happy with what I submitted but you don’t actually think you’re going to win.”

Jones, who has been working at Australia Post for almost three years after a decade as an insurance broker, won the prize ahead of more than 20 other submissions from around Australia and New Zealand.

In her entry, Jones challenged the value of risk assessments and said a more integrated approach was needed.

“Often by the time risk assessments are viewed by the people that actually have the authority to challenge what has already been done – it’s already moved on, it’s already changed. The risk assessment really is just a point in time,” she said.

Ken Bates, group head of risk and insurance of Lendlease, and president of RIMS Australasia, said the decision, made by the board of RIMS Australasia, to name Jones as winner was “absolutely unanimous” due to the entry’s “innovative thought”.

“It didn’t tell us something we already knew. It attempted to be provocative,” Bates said.

Bates added that the RIMS US chapter have now announced that it will run a reciprocal ‘thought leadership’ competition, awarding an American risk manager a trip to Australia for the RIMS regional conference in Sydney in August.