Nume Ekeghe
The Risk Managers Association of Nigeria (RIMAN) has urged businesses to adopt measures that would enable them survive post COVID-19 pandemic.
According to RIMAN, there would be a new business and consumption attitude due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic.
The President, RIMAN, Mr. Magnus Nnoka said this yesterday, during a webinar organised by the association and EY, with the topic: “Risk Management for Business Resilience.”
Partner, Advisory, Leader at EY West Africa, Mr. Ben Afudego, also noted that risk managers are inclined to adopting risk management practices to mitigate the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis.
Nnoka said: “We are in a crisis period globally and also in Nigeria. And what this means is that when we come out from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are going to be talking of the past because we are going to see a new normal and that new normal means that some of the risk approaches, we have used in the past would not be of use anymore.
“We are going to see a new normal which would come with opportunities and challenges and off course would come with new approaches.”
He also noted that businesses that have good risk management principles would survive post pandemic.
“The best practice wherever risk management is seen as a culture remains that risk managers are involved at the beginning in designing business strategy and any institution that deviates from this would do reactive risk management.
“What has happened in the last few months is that risk managers have had to go back to reassess their risk management framework, businesses continuity framework, risk appetite and risk strategies.
“For a business to be there for a long while, you need to take your risk manager from the beginning. At these times, the institutions that would come out stronger and survive are institutions that have embedded risk management culture as part of their day to day life.”
He further added: “After the pandemic, we are going to see a new normal this time around which means a new risk approach and a new business module.”
On his part, Afudego said: “As we try to get to the next phase post lockdown, businesses should consider making changes to your business model in light of the issues we have faced during this crisis.
“Organisations should have the mechanism to identify the scenarios that would impact on the new business module and organisations should ensure that their crisis management team has to re-establish how to be truly equipped to manage short term impacts of crisis.”
The Chairman, Board of Trustees, RIMAN, Ms. Folakemi Fatogbe said: “Right now we have crisis like no other and it means that our responses as risk managers would be responses that we had given at no other time. The COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented in many ways in terms of the speed and how it actually caught up to different countries.
“Business modules would need to change because customer behavior would change. We have to be very proactive in how we manage businesses’ business continuity plans needs to be constantly refreshed.”
