Whose risk is it anyway?

Last week I interviewed Northfield Information Services' founder and president, Dan diBartolomeo for The Journal of Performance Measurement(R). Dan shared many insights with me, and I'm sure our readers will find his thoughts and comments quite compelling.

One thing that struck me was the issue of risk from the standpoint of "whose risk are we measuring?" That is, are we looking at risk from the standpoint of the manager or the client? I've addressed this from the performance standpoint, but Dan was speaking of it from a risk point of view, which I found quite interesting.

There are loads of questions one might want to ask when it comes to risk, and they have different degrees of meaning depending on whether we're speaking of it from the manager's or client's perspective. For example:

• the risk of being fired
• the risk of losing our money
• the risk of uncertainty
• the risk of not being able to meet our objectives.

When it comes to risk management, the manager and client should be looking at risk from a variety of perspectives, yes? Just like performance measurement!

p.s., We are embarking on a research project this month to see how firms manage and measure risk. We've teamed up with Leslie Rahl and Capital Management Risk Advisors. In addition, we have several cosponsors supporting this effort. We will gain insights into how managers are measuring and  monitoring their risk.

p.p.s., Dan diBartolomeo recently conducted a webinar for our firm, where he shared details on the Bernie Madoff scandal. He is also featured in the August issue of Risk Professional Magazine.

p.p.p.s., Dan's interview will appear in the upcoming Summer issue of The Journal.