I came across a small article that appeared in “FINS” (a career site by the Wall Street Journal) early this month.   The topic of the article was about standardizing risk manager certifications, and the four which were mentioned were:

-- Financial Risk Manager from the Global Association of Risk Professionals

-- Professional Risk Manager from the Professional Risk Managers' International Association

-- RIMS Fellow from the Risk and Insurance Management Society

-- Society of Actuaries Fellow and Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst from the Society of Actuaries

Notice anything missing?  The time-honored and very popular Associate in Risk Management was not mentioned in Jeremy Greenfield’s April 1 article, but did appear later in an extended follow up article which differentiated between financial risk management designations and enterprise risk management designations. 

With the recent introduction of the Enterprise Risk course—augmenting the ARM—the Insurance Institutes of America have added currency and depth the ARM designation and we applaud that.  It is an excellent course in itself.

It looks like we are going to see a proliferation of “risk management” designations, no doubt accelerated by the 2008 capital market meltdowns.   We will have to accustom ourselves to understanding (a) the nature of risk being managed and (b) by whom.