The need for risk management
Chances are fairly high that you’re already acquainted with the term risk management, for it is a very popular career choice and following a risk management course post-grad school will let you in the industry rather easily or may be easier than people with no formal training and tool to cater to the job’s needs.
Risk management is in itself just delicate well thought out decision making and implementation of practices and methods to make sure future decisions aren’t made in a damaging way towards the interest of the organization. Sounds like an easy job right? It certainly is everything but easy- in fact, it requires really fine judgement capabilities and all sorts of prerequisite information and skills.
Risk management wasn’t as popular as it is today, just a couple of years ago. The managers of those times performed insurance upkeep and preventive measure deployment against natural disasters and such. Covid-19 has changed the filed for good, we now know how dramatically the whole future of a company can fall into the pit of uncertainty in a matter of days.
This is why risk management as a career is not only crucial, it’s importance has finally made itself obvious to the corporate sector of India and the world. Risk management teams are now providing input to crucial business decisions and their advice is being heard loud and clear.
What do you need to become a risk manager?
If it isn’t obvious immediately, a very good sense of business administration and finances will help you more than any other skill, except perhaps good judgment. In order to gain a very good grasp of business administration and knowledge of business finances- a risk management course can be enrolled in.
Risk management courses such as MBA in Risk Management or a one-year Postgraduate diploma in management or even as little as a bachelor’s degree in risk management will make an unimaginable difference in your skills and perhaps someone that is switching their career to risk management without the proper tools.
In order to qualify for say- an MBA or PGDM, you first need to clear a bachelor’s and 10+2 degree with at least 60% marks. After that, any of the national level entrance examinations for management studies such as CAT, XAT, MAT, GMAT, etc. have to be cleared and based on your score and profile a number of options in terms of your preferred institute may present themselves to you.
The average fees for a traditional degree (two years, four semesters and compulsory on-campus studies) lies between 12 to 24 lakh rupees depending on which B-School you end up in. There is however the alternative of distance learning here, which allows for flexibility at the time of studying and the ability to work through the course without actually being on campus so that it doesn’t put a halt in your career- at the cost of lower practical exposure.
Job profiles, salaries and future prospects
There are a number of different domains under risk management that a person can work in:
Enterprise Risk Analyst- making sure a thorough analysis of all the possible risks that could pose in the way of operations of the company and making sure countermeasures are in place for all of them.
Risk Manager- making sure the control aspect of the risks is taken care of and operating on the analysis and reports provided by the enterprise risk analysts.
Financial Risk Manager- determining the financial outcomes of the imposing risks, minimizing them where possible and providing crucial input in the financial decisions of the company.
Risk and Insurance Manager- making sure the company has a metaphorical pillow to fall back into if the risk doesn’t pay off and can’t be minimized further by the use of insurance.
These are diverse fields of work and they bring in an equally diverse scale of pay with them. The starting salary of a risk manager as a fresher can be 6-8 LPA while it scales up to 12-15LPA for mid-career (6-7 years of experience) and up to 25LPA for late-career professionals (10-15 years of experience).
If the current situation isn’t a wake-up call for how important this field is to not just the corporate but the public sector too in a direct and indirect way, then there aren’t any louder gongs left to hit. The future prospects of risk management are bright and the industry doesn’t seem to be losing the demand for risk management professionals for the foreseeable future.
