A three-year journey to embed Aware Super’s best practice risk culture has earned Chief Risk Officer Jane Couchman the Risk Management Institute of Australasia’s ‘Risk Leader of the Year’ Award for 2023.

With Aware Super having completed its multi-year digital transformation program, Catalyst, at the end of 2023, Ms Couchman said the ability to take on the industry’s largest successful digital transformation was underpinned by the fund’s commitment to a risk model focused on enabling bold, strategic decision-making across the fund.

“It’s often said in corporate Australia that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’, and that’s a vitally important consideration when designing organisational risk management,” said Ms Couchman.

“What was very clear to us was the need for our risk management framework to enable these ambitious, calculated strategies by moving beyond the procedural aspects of risk management, and embedding the necessary skills and behaviours into our offices, our teams and our people.”

Through its three lines of accountability (3LoA) risk management framework, Aware Super has focused on a model of distributed accountability, where risk is managed close to where it occurs. This decentralisation of decision-making enables a more nimble workplace where subject matter experts are deeply involved in risk identification, assessment and management as part of delivering the organisation’s objectives.

It’s a model Ms Couchman says is increasingly necessary for an industry faced with a rapidly evolving risk landscape on multiple fronts – a scenario she believes played a significant role in her award.

“We’ve never before seen the confluence of risks that corporations are now facing, or the speed with which external and internal threats emerge and evolve,” said Ms Couchman.

“As one of Australia’s largest superannuation funds we have a front-row seat to an incredibly fast-growing external threat landscape, combined with a growing need to make better use of technology, growing funds under management, and Australia’s upcoming ‘silver tsunami’ all converging.

“While I am deeply honoured to receive this recognition from RMIA, I am also extremely pleased that Australia’s world-leading superannuation sector is under the eye of the regional leaders in risk thinking. The recognition that superannuation is really focused on getting risk culture right is great news for the members of super funds who ultimately are the owners of the funds under management, and the beneficiaries of everything we do to support their best possible retirement outcomes.”

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