As global business risks intensify, risk management is taking onan increasingly important role in companies around the world. Arecent Accenture survey underlines this shift. Titled “RiskManagement for an Era of Greater Uncertainty,” the studyincluded respondents from 446 organizations around the world.Ninety-six percent said their business has an individual whofunctions as the chief risk officer, although in some cases withoutthe formal title “CRO.” This is up substantially from the 78percent of companies in Accenture's 2011 survey that had designateda chief risk officer.

Perhaps even more telling, the person responsible for riskmanagement has the ear of these companies' senior leaders. In 81percent of surveyed organizations, the risk management ownerdiscusses risk issues with the board of directors on a regularbasis (see Figure 1). In addition, in many organizations, riskmanagement has moved from the responsibility of finance to falldirectly within the domain of the CEO. (See Figure 2,below.)

Treasury & Risk sat down with Steve Culp,global managing director of risk management for Accenture, to talkbriefly about the survey's findings.