Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) offers a broad package of services delivered by a multidisciplinary team of professionals who will work with you to identify risks, quantify the potential impact on your business, and recommend mitigation strategies to reduce or eliminate exposures.

We facilitate identification of critical functions and help develop strategies to restore them after a loss.  We can advise you of the most appropriate level of response and help you organize teams to respond to emergencies, manage crises, and recover business operations.  We can help you document and implement your plans.  Once implemented, we can help you test your plans to verify they meet your needs.

 

Business Process Management (BPM)

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) provides a broad variety of BPM services.  More than ever, we recognize that Risk Professionals:

• Need to do more with less – with responsibilities out-pacing resources
• Need better controls – to more effectively quantify and track performance
• Need better information, aggregated, streamlined and in real-time.

As such, we deliver an integrated suite of on-demand risk management solutions that combine flexible workflows and user-defined business rules with centralized process dashboards and real-time reporting.  BDRE utilizes web-based technologies based on individual client needs or industry requirements incorporating a variety of application modules targeting common risk management process bottlenecks, including:

A.   Compliance Management

Complete process automation – from the formalization of vendor contract types to certificate of insurance input, tracking, renewal and reporting

B.   Exposure Data Collection

Automate the collection, aggregation and reporting of exposure values – from planning and task assignment to reporting and preparing market submission

C.   Contract Review

Standardize contract language (manage the exceptions), automate and track review cycles and other performance measures while optimizing best practices.

D.   Recommendation Management

Centralized solution to monitor and track audit and risk control recommendations – from initial survey input to recommendation approval and final execution

E.   Certificate Issuance

On-demand request and issuance of certificates of insurance – renew thousands of certificates instantaneously

 

Captive Management Services

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) consults with both single parent and group captives on feasibility and the on-going strategy and operation of the captive.  We work directly with captive owners or in partnership with service providers to captives. We also provide business consulting to vendors servicing the captive Insurance industry.  Services provided include:

A. Feasibility and pre-feasibility reviews

We evaluate individual and group insurance programs to determine the benefits of using a captive insurance company to fund the risk. Our evaluations start with a simple pre-feasibility assessment which can identify many of the key issues involved in the captive decision. From there we conduct full feasibility studies, including the implementation of a captive if appropriate. Our implementation services include domicile selection, application filing and vendor selection.

B. Captive strategy

Many established captives have outgrown their original missions and are challenged to continue to add value to their owners.  We perform strategic reviews which examine the stages of the captive’s lifecycle and develop appropriate objectives for the company going forward.  Strategic reviews can be used to evaluate expansion, potential closure or merging of the captive as well as initiating a significant re-structuring such as a change in domicile.

C. Communication and reporting

We develop communication programs to ensure that concise and meaningful information is made available to the owners allowing them to manage their participation in the captive.  This includes designing reports that stimulate loss control activities and educating the owners on the key accounting characteristics of the captive.

D. Organizational and resourcing studies

We design the administrative processes of the captive to minimize the expenses of operating the captive.  Our group captive services include the facilitation of the group, including the sharing of best practices among the members.  We also evaluate the need for internal staffing and assist in the selection of service providers to the captive.

E. Technology services

We use web-based technology to aid in the operation of the captive. We develop and administer extranets for captives providing functionality to hold a central repository of key documents, manage  and exchange data on the program and manage tasks across organizational boundaries.

F. Educational Programs

We design, manage and deliver in-person and web-based training programs on captives. Courses are custom designed in response to client needs. They are typically used to educate sales teams on captives and the latest developments in the captive insurance industry.

Expertise:

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) Captive Consulting services are provided in partnership with Newport Risk Services.  NRS was founded in 2005 by Andrew Berry and draws on his expertise gained in the Insurance and risk management industries over the past twenty years.

Mr. Berry’s expertise includes:

•  Nine years risk management consulting experience gained with Tillinghast – Towers Perrin, including work in both the European and US markets and being part of the team which developed Tillinghast’s enterprise risk management consulting practice.

• Technology experience gained as founder and President of Global Risk Exchange (GRX), an award winning exchange and technology company. GRX was designed to improve the efficiency of the insurance industry by increasing the electronic movement of data between and within different parties involved in an insurance program.
• Captive consulting experience gained with Strategic Risk Solutions, an independent captive management and consulting firm
• Operational and marketing experience gained with both GRX and Strategic Risk Solutions, including the implementation and management of the company’s marketing program.
• Business, finance and entrepreneurial education gained in the UK and at Babson College, whose MBA program is recognized as the leader for entrepreneurial studies.

Disaster Recovery

In addition to Business Continuity Planning, Black Diamond Risk Enterprises offers discreet Disaster Recovery services focused on post-event damage control and business recovery.  Services include critical operations risk assessment, capacity and gap review; Recovery definition, objectives, strategy and implementation.

 

Executive Compensation

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises provides advice and performs surveys on salary and incentive compensation programs.  Our expertise includes strategy setting, competitive analysis and plan design.  We provide support to Compensation Committees and Sr. Management in addressing all executive compensation matters with consideration for governance best practices.

 

Characteristics of Superior ERM Infrastructure

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises works in partnership with firms to upgrade the quality of their risk management infrastructure.

A firm can have great policies and methodologies but will be unable to reap their benefits without a superior risk infrastructure.  Characteristics of infrastructure at the core of superior risk solutions include the idea that the appropriate proactive risk team is in place with the right quantitative financial skills.  Also, a superior risk infrastructure calls for an integrated operational and risk-software environment which integrates data management, risk analytics and reporting in a flexible manner.  A superior risk infrastructure provides the risk team and their business partners with the appropriate tools to accomplish its mandate.  Organizations that have an integrated risk-data infrastructure are able to obtain a competitive advantage.  For example, there is significant value to having timely access to market data, transaction data and legal data.

Superior Risk Management Methodologies

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises works in partnership with firms to upgrade the quality of their risk management methodologies.

 

Characteristics of methodologies at the core of superior risk solutions contain the idea that Value-at-Risk (VaR) and stress test methodologies are predictive of the actual losses and integrated across all risks and all books of business.  Further, mathematical models should be properly vetted and positions should be independently valued.  It is essential that the methodologies used to control risk should also be used to run the business as well as utilized for such things as economic and regulatory capital management, pricing and performance measurement (i.e. pass the “use test”).

 

Significant practical and analytic progress has been made in measuring financial risk on an integrated basis.  Key model risk challenges for measuring operational risk include accounting for long modeling time horizons, a significant divergence of expert opinion with respect to self-assessment and lack of uniform global regulatory standards.  A key challenge has also been to secure adequate levels of internal and external loss data to calculate the amount of operational risk.

Superior Risk Management Policies

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises works in partnership with firms to upgrade the quality of their risk management policies.

Characteristics of policies at the core of a superior Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approach include the idea that the tolerance for risk is integrated and consistent with business strategies and vice versa.  Policies should also call for risk measures to be back tested.  It is also essential that policies call for limits on the amount at-risk to be expressed in meaningful terms and reflect a desired tolerance for risk.  Finally, policies should call for risk to be properly disclosed internally and externally on a granular and integrated portfolio-management basis.

Risk Education

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) provides Risk education services.  BDRE designs, manages and delivers both in-person and web based training programs.  These programs are customized to meet individual client needs.

CEO, Dr. Robert Mark, is the founding Executive Director of the Masters in Financial Engineering Program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Anderson School of Management.  He is also a cofounder of the Board of the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA), which offers programs for Risk Industry professionals.  Dr. Mark earned his Ph.D., from New York University’s Graduate School of Engineering and Science.  Subsequently Dr. Mark received an Advanced Professional Certificate (APC) in accounting from NYU’s Stern Graduate School of Business and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program.

 

Risk Management Information Systems (RMIS)

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) provides risk management information system (RMIS) solutions that help you achieve your targeted results.  BDRE provides needs assessment, gap analysis, evaluation and selection services.  BDRE promotes the idea that the way an organization collects, manages and shares information influences its effectiveness and efficiency.  We listen to your needs, evaluate alternatives and create customer-specific solutions.

 

Solvency II

Solvency II is a regulatory regime that was introduced for insurers and reinsurers in 2010.  It is intended to provide a consistent harmonized framework for regulation of insurers and reinsurers.  It is built on a risk-based approach to setting the capital requirements for insurers, starting from a consistent valuation of both assets and liabilities at market value.

Similar to Basel II & III, Solvency II incorporates a three-pillar approach:

1. Capital Requirements
2. Supervisory Review
3. Market Discipline

 

Subject Matter Expertise / Testimony

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) provides expert testimony in a variety of risk related areas. BDRE professionals are experienced, credentialed, articulate industry veterans who are passionate about the business of risk.

Supply Chain Risk Management

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) works with organizations to optimize supply chain risk management. These services include identifying, quantifying and translating the risks within the supply chain into manageable financial metrics.  Our process includes providing a detailed  assessment, analysis and implementation roadmap.

 

Vendor Selection

Black Diamond Risk Enterprises (BDRE) understands the nuanced nature of broker/client and vendor/client relations.  BDRE provides an independent, objective evaluation of service provider selection, performance and contractual agreements.  We recognize that developing or improving a relationship with a service provider requires a clear understanding of your needs, expectations, objectives, operations and strategy.

An efficient, informed vendor selection process requires objective factual information unbiased by personal relationships.  It carries profound implications which may lead to changes in current compensation, services, expectations (Service Level Agreements & Stewardship Reports), management reporting and more.