Losses and Gains

One can go from loss to gain – it just takes a bit of focus and a lot of work.

Just ask Tino Brambilla, manager of insurance services at Manitoba Hydro.

Brambilla did not begin his career in risk management.

Armed with a diploma in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Winnipeg’s Red River College, he responded to an ad for a job designing sprinkler systems and testing pumps on sprinkler systems.

“It was actually a natural progression to go from an engineering world into a loss control world,” he says, when in 1978, he was hired as a loss control representative for Insurers’ Advisory Organization and Fire Underwriters Survey.

Working there for a number of years, Brambilla was fortunate to interact with specialists ranging from engineers to underwriters and risk managers.

But it was his interest in better understanding the needs of his customers – insurance underwriters – that moved him towards an associateship at the Insurance Institute of Canada, completed in 1984.

That was followed by obtaining a Canadian Risk Management Diploma in 1992 and finishing the institute’s Fellowship program, choosing the risk management track, in 1994.

“That’s when I thought I would certainly like to get into the risk management side of the business,” he says.

Why the interest in switching from loss control to risk? Because the former meant “you were always doing something for a different industry. You never did have the control to follow through on a recommendation,” Brambilla says.

“There wasn’t the follow-through, the sense of accomplishment that you would get when you are responsible for identifying a gap and then closing the gap,” he says.

That held considerable sway for Brambilla. He secured a risk management position at Centra Gas in 1997 and continued on as risk manager for Manitoba Hydro when the Crown corporation purchased Centra Gas in 1999.

The almost four-decades veteran of loss control, insurance and risk management remains there today.

The move has worked out well for Brambilla, recipient of this year’s Donald M. Stuart Award, widely recognized as Canada’s highest honour within the risk management field. Bestowed annually by the Ontario chapter of the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS), the award was presented to Brambilla in September at the 2015 RIMS Canada Conference.

His accomplishments and contributions are many. Brambilla not only helped to consolidate the insurance and risk management programs when Manitoba Hydro merged with Centra Gas, he did so again when Winnipeg Hydro was bought. Brambilla is also an active member of Manitoba Hydro’s Corporate Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Steering Committee and its Natural Gas Emergency Response Steering Committee.

AN EVOLVING FIELD

When Brambilla first became involved in the risk management world in 1997, he says that was just about the time everyone was starting to talk about ERM. Shortly after Manitoba Hydro purchased Centra Gas, in fact, the Crown corporation, too, was among “the initial vanguards into enterprise risk management,” he reports.

Determining the balance between traditional risk management and ERM is something that industry has been working on ever since, Brambilla suggests.

That said, the efforts seem to be paying off. Risk management is now being embraced by all levels of business – from the field worker to the C-suite and to the Board of Directors, he notes. “Risk management has become a vocabulary of everyone in industry at all levels and in all sectors,” he points out, adding his view is that the term “is so ingrained now in everyone’s vocabulary that I sometimes wonder about who should be the risk management champion, and should there really be one risk management champion?”

Perhaps, there should be many. Brambilla suggests healthy co-operation among different departments, as well as ensuring everyone is speaking the same language, can help to advance an organization’s risk management efforts. “At the end of the day, a risk is a risk is a risk, and each respective department treats its risk the same as we would in another area, but specific to their risks.”

Numerous perspectives may prove helpful in light of a world where risk, the risk profession and the demands on risk professionals are all changing quickly.

Consider, for example, cyber risk. “Clearly, it’s here,” Brambilla says. “It does impact all of us and I think it’s our responsibility at least to go through the due diligence process,” he says, whether or not a decision is made to buy coverage.

Pointing out that Manitoba Hydro has a very extensive IT department with its own expertise, he says a risk professional should still make contact and initiate discussion to ensure that, if not already under way, risk is identified and analyzed to determine what mitigation, if any, is needed.

Whatever the department – be it engineering, maintenance or something else – Brambilla’s experience to date has been that “they do appreciate a set of different eyes to look at their side of the business.”

Looking globally, another challenge faced by all manner of organizations is climate change. “That’s probably the one common denominator that’s driving decisions in government, in industry and throughout the economy now,” he suggests.

Risk professionals need to stay on top of developments as best they can, always considering how their organizations can be affected.

DEEPER POOL

It is encouraging that, more and more, risk and risk professionals are becoming part of the fabric of daily business operations. But the changing demands require that the pool of risk professionals be regularly replenished.

Like any industry today, attracting the best and the brightest is a challenge. “The demographics of the workforce are such that we all are competing for the same people,” Brambilla says.

For both insurance and risk management, “I think they [young people and new recruits] just have to realize what we’re asking them to be involved in is an industry that encompasses every [area] and that can accommodate them,” he says.

“The challenge is just getting them to understand what’s involved with the industry and all the opportunities that exist within it.”

VOLUNTEERING BENEFITS

With demands on risk professionals expanding, it can be a time-consuming venture to volunteer for groups supporting and promoting risk management.

Despite the hours and effort, Brambilla emphasizes that what he received in return from all his volunteer work in insurance and risk management has been well worth it.

“Getting involved in committees exposes you to such a network of individuals. That alone, in itself, is worth the participation,” he says.

“I just found the interaction, the networking abilities and the people that you meet from coast-to-coast, nationally and internationally, was well worth it,” he says.

Brambilla has served as board member and president of the Insurance Institute of Manitoba (IIM), a board member of his local RIMS chapter since 2001 (including a four-year stint as chapter president), and in 2005, became involved the RIMS Canada Council, serving as representative, treasurer, vice chair and chair over his time with the council.

It was just about the time Brambilla was completing the fellowship program, also serving then with IIM, that he was approached by the Manitoba RIMS chapter.

“Once they approached me, I basically shifted my gears from the insurance industry side of things to risk management,” he reports.

It was a gain, indeed.