NEW YORK (April 25, 2024) — RIMS, the risk management society®, has announced Steven Robles, Assistant Chief Executive Officer / County Risk Manager for the County of Los Angeles, as the 2024 RIMS Risk Manager of the Year. Mrunal S Pandit, Senior Manager – Insurance for Tata Consumer Products Limited was inducted in the Risk Management Honor Roll. Steven and Mrunal will be presented with the honors at RISKWORLD® in San Diego.
The Risk Manager of the Year program aims to raise the profile of the risk management profession and the outstanding programs the honorees have implemented within their organizations. The program was initiated in 1977 and the Risk Management Honor Roll was added in 1981.
“Despite coming from different parts of the world and from opposite business sectors, this year’s honorees have demonstrated the universal power of risk management and its ability to drive enterprise forward,” said RIMS CEO Gary A. LaBranche, FASAE, CAE. “Steven Robles and Mrunal Pandit have built robust risk programs that have empowered their organizations’ to keep people safe, support innovation, and strengthen resilience. On behalf of the global RIMS community, I congratulate them both and thank them for sharing their experiences.”
Any full-time professional who administers risk management programs for a corporation, nonprofit institution, or government entity is eligible for submission in the Risk Manager of the Year program. The nominations are judged by an independent panel comprising prior honorees and other risk management and insurance industry leaders.
ABOUT THE WINNERS
RISK MANAGER OF THE YEAR: STEVEN ROBLES
Throughout his more than 30-year career in risk management, Steven Robles has demonstrated creativity, imagination, and ingenuity to develop truly transformative risk programs for his organizations.
In his leadership role with the County of Los Angeles, Steven has developed an effective and transformational risk management program that addresses the evolving risks facing the County’s 100,000 employees, 38 departments, $44.6 billion budget, as well as its 10 million residents, 88 cities and more than 120 unincorporated communities.
Steven’s approach to managing risk for this behemoth enterprise – that boasts the 21st largest economy in the world – has been singular: minimize the cost of risk. Key to achieving that focus has required a commitment to improving the County’s risk culture and operational capabilities.
Among many accomplishments, his team has implemented a multi-year plan to control costs and reduce liability that includes: the expansion of purchasing commercial insurance to protect against the risk of catastrophic losses; an aggressive claim closure program to finalize workers’ compensation claims for employees who no longer work for the County; and the development and implementation of a comprehensive risk financing plan to lower the long-term workers’ compensation liabilities.
Risk management has taken the County from a fully self-insured organization to a fully insured entity for nearly all risks. It has instituted a robust loss recovery program that recovered over $19 million last year; a compromise and release program that has closed over a thousand workers’ compensation claims and saved the County millions over the last decade; a risk management privacy program; a parametric earthquake program; and countless other innovative strategies.
Under his direction, the County continues to successfully update the data management associated with claims and litigation. Steven and his team have begun developing the next generation of audit analytics. Leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, risk management is equipped to continuously audit touch points to ensure the best possible outcomes and detect anomalies.
His extraordinary leadership has led to an enterprise risk model that embeds risk management into the planning, execution, and completion of all Board of Supervisors’ priorities and operational functions of the County. Steven is an influential leader, known for bringing high-level and intuitive insight to risk management and insurance. His leadership and personal influence have allowed him to garner support both inside and outside the organization to fully execute forward-thinking initiatives. And, while he is well-versed in risk management and high-level business practices, his genuine interest and concern for people sets him apart.
RISK MANAGEMENT HONOR ROLL – Mrunal S Pandit
Mrunal Pandit embraces the power of proactivity and forward-thinking and has leveraged these philosophies to elevate risk management, keep her organization resilient, and provide critical support to employees and local communities.
Mrunal is the global head of insurance for Tata Consumer Products Limited (TCPL), one of the leading fast moving consumer goods companies in India. TCPL unites the Tata Group’s principal food and beverage interests under one umbrella and strives to build better lives and thriving communities globally through the delivery of its products.
Upon joining TCPL in 2017, Mrunal immediately began to catalog and map the company’s business units to fully understand the spectrum of its exposures. With that information, she successfully identified insurable and non-insurable business risks, as well as the advantages of self-insuring or transferring the risk.
This endeavor entailed creating synergies across geographies to ensure the organization was protected with insurance. Mrunal was instrumental in developing the master controlled program for liability and trade credit lines to allow the organization to better finance risks. This effort required engagement from a range of global business units, an in-depth understanding of business needs, goals, and exposures, as well as regulation governing each unit. This exercise led to significant premium savings for the company.
Mrunal also recognized that there was no separate system for managing natural catastrophe claims since many of the locations in which the company operated had not experienced floods in more than 50 years. She quickly took action, highlighting the impact floods would have on the business. Her team implemented steps to address this including setting up a claims team comprising insurance, supply chain, finance, and others business leaders to develop a comprehensive natural catastrophe risk mitigation and management framework.
In 2018, TCPL and the surrounding area were impacted by a monsoon that led to floods in the states of Kerala and Karnataka. The floods impacted TCPL’s factories, the company’s tea and coffee plantations, nearby roadways, as well as the lives of employees and their dependents. With a claims management framework in place that included everything from processes for documenting destruction with photos and videos to improved communications channels to inform business leaders and employees, TCPL was better prepared to assess the situation, support those who were affected and recover from the event. TCPL experienced nearly 20% in insurance premium savings as a result of its risk management actions.
Mrunal is a risk management thought leader. She is a fellow of the Insurance Institute of India, a RIMS-CRMP certification holder, and accomplished author of insurance articles for various publications. She is viewed as strategic business leader at TCPL who is essential to the organization’s success.
To Learn More about the accomplishments of these honorees, read RIMS Risk Management Magazine’s 2024 Awards Issue.
About RISKWORLD®
Launched in 1963 as RIMS Annual Conference & Exhibition, RISKWORLD® attracts some 10,000 risk and insurance professionals at all experience levels, business executives with risk management interests, brokers, insurers and service providers for the ultimate learning and networking experience. The four-day. RISKWORLD experience offers more than 150 learning opportunities, keynote presentations, special events, and an expansive Marketplace with hundreds of solutions providers – all with countless opportunities to engage and elevate the risk community. RISKWORLD 2024 is scheduled for May 5 - 8 in San Diego. RIMS will celebrate its 75th Anniversary at RISKWORLD 2025 in Chicago from May 4 - 7.
About RIMS
RIMS, the risk management society®️, empowers risk professionals to make the world safer, more secure, and more sustainable. Through networking, professional development, certification, advocacy, and research, RIMS and its 80 chapters serves more than 200,000 risk practitioners and business leaders from over 75 countries. Founded in 1950, the Society publishes the award-winning Risk Management Magazine and produces RISKWORLD®️, the largest annual gathering of global risk professionals. RIMS embraces diversity, equity and inclusion and welcomes all risk professionals to connect and learn, explore the online Risk Knowledge library, tune into the RIMScast podcast series, and engage with the global risk community via RIMS social media channels. To learn more, visit https://www.RIMS.org.
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