Despite all the talk about risk management, a recent surveysuggests that few companies are satisfied with their efforts, withjust one out of 10 executives describing their company's riskmanagement programs as “highly effective.” Other results of thesurvey of more than 1,400 global executives, conducted by HarvardBusiness Review Analytical Services for Zurich Financial Services,indicate that one key to successful risk management is having asingle executive, like a chief risk officer, in charge.

“Risk management needs to have an effective owner,” says MikeKerner, CEO of Zurich Global Corporate North America. “There needto be really clear roles and responsibilities. If multiple peopleare responsible for something, nobody is responsible.”

According to the Zurich study, companies are more likely to doadvance planning for many different types of risk if they have achief risk officer (CRO) or other C-suite executive leading riskmanagement than are companies with no one in charge. For example,55% of companies with a CRO have plans in place for dealing withinformation security risks, vs. 39% of companies where another execheads risk management and just 36% of those with no executive incharge. Sixty percent of companies with CROs have done businesscontinuity planning, vs. 51% of companies with another executive incharge of risk and 47% of companies with no single executive incharge of risk.