Health & Wellness Risk Consulting

In the increasingly complex world within which we live, risk management is a discipline that is growing in importance for both private and public sector organisations.

Risk management is used to assist organisations to avoid, reduce the likelihood of, or minimise the impact of, events that might otherwise cause them significant harm, whether that be financial, reputational or any other damage. In essence, risk management is an important tool to reduce losses, control uncertainty and optimise decision making to improve performance. Actuaries are skilled professionals whose comprehensive training includes the use of statistical analysis to understand risks and uncertainties. They are therefore well placed to support organisations’ risk management efforts. There are many useful books and guides written on the subject of risk management. However, an actuarial approach to risk management places a particular focus on measuring and understanding the impact of risks, both positive and negative, on the outcomes experienced and considering how the risks and their impacts may evolve over time. Where appropriate an actuarial approach will place financial values on risk. In particular an actuarial approach considers risks more broadly, seeking to understand the range of potential impacts and the interaction of risks, rather than adopting a distinct impact and probability for each risk separately. Actuarial risk analysis is not just based on short-term horizons but may extend many decades into the future when necessary. This focus on understanding long term impacts allows decision makers to better understand the typical range within which outcomes are expected to lie, as well as appreciating the potential impacts of more extreme events occurring. The training and experience actuaries receive provides them with a uniquely broad-based combination of skills suited to risk management, allowing them:

• To explore the full range of health risks that might affect an organisation;
• To quantify these risks and their implications in the short and long terms;
• To quantify the value of any mitigation versus the cost of undertaking it;
• To illustrate the range of possible outcomes;
• To link financial and non-financial factors, such as the social and environmental impact for example from a pandemic/s or health disaster;
• To integrate risk analysis into the wider economic business management process; and
• To communicate the risks to decision makers in a balanced and effective way.

Given the complexity of the wide range of events that could affect a business, the actuarial approach is highly valued by a range of organisations in growing and protecting their operations. At Calibre, utilising our highly experienced actuary, Lara Wayburne, we focus on the identification, quantification, mitigation and control of risks rather than the governance arrangements that might be placed around a risk management framework. Other principles may be added to this framework to address particular issues. Building on the principles, we intend to illustrate the benefits of this approach through practical case studies on health, HIV and EAP risk amongst others. It is important to see the framework not as a series of boxes to tick, but as a continuous cycle. The appropriate speed for navigating this cycle depends on the pace of change of the organisation or the wider environment. This need is addressed with the actuarial health risk reporting provided by Calibre Clinical Consultants.