Canadian risk management VPs surveyed report median salary of $174,000

More than one in four risk managers surveyed in the United States have 25 years’ experience or more on the job, while in Canada fewer than 19% have been managing risk for more than a quarter century, a recent survey from Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) Inc. suggests.

In its Risk Management Compensation Survey 2015 announced Monday, RIMS asked respondents how many years’ experience they had. [click image below to enlarge]

The median experience was 17 years for American respondents and 13 years for Canadian respondents.

When asked how many years experience they had, 12% of U.S. respondents said they had 30 years or more, while only 7% of Canadians did. Fourteen per cent of U.S. respondents had 25 to 29 years’ experience while 12% of Canadians did.

The results were based on 1,145 respondents (999 of whom were employed as risk management professional in the U.S. as of June 1, and 146 of whom were Canadians in the same occupation) to a broadcast e-mail sent Aug. 20.

The margin of error for the 95% confidence level is 2.8 percentage points for U.S. respondents and 7.5 points for Canadians.

The median annual base salary for Canadian risk management professionals responding was $104,000 as of June 1. There were 144 full-time risk management professionals in Canada answering. The median salary varies by profession. For example, for Canadian respondents indicating that the titles that most closely represent their roles and responsibility was chief risk officer or vice president of risk management, the median salary of was $174,000. The median salary for those who function as claims managers or workers compensation claims manager, the median salary was $72,500.

Respondents were asked to exclude earnings from other work, overtime pay, commissions, bonuses, incentive pay, profit sharing, deferred compensation, retirement benefits received and the monetary value of other benefits. [click image below to enlarge]

The median salary for other job titles was: $120,000 for director of enterprise risk management/strategic risk management; $131,000 for director of insurance and risk management; $102,000 for manager of insurance management; and $100,600 for risk management analyst (enterprise-wide).

Compared with one year previous, Canadian risk management professionals reported a 2.7% average increase in base salary as of June 1, 2015, RIMS noted in the report. Nine in 10 Canadian respondents are offered medical coverage and

only 2% of them are not offered a retirement plan, RIMS added. Four in ten respondents had a defined contribution retirement plan from their employer while 30% said they had defined benefit pension plans.

American respondents tended to be older than Canadians. While the age of one per cent of Canadian respondents was 65 years or older, 5% of Americans were seniors. More than one in four (28%) of U.S. respondents were 55 to 64 years old, while only 23% of Canadians were.

One in three Canadian respondents work for the government, 36% work for publicly trade companies, 16% work for privately-held firms, 9% work for non-profit organizations and 6% work for employers in “other” categories.

Respondents, given a list of functions, were asked which of those functions they performed in addition to risk management. Of the Canadian respondents, 28% reported business continuity, 18% reported compliance, 14% reported safety, 12% reported operations, 8% reported finance/accounting, 6% reported security, 5% reported legal counsel, 5% reported treasury, 4% reported internal audit, 3% reported human resources/benefits, 1% reported information technology and 18% said “other.”