Risk Oversight Practices: Insights from Corporate Directors

As companies recover from the financial crisis, many corporate directors wonder if they and their boards are doing all they should to fulfill their fiduciary duty with respect to risk oversight. To address this concern and identify current practices in this area, The Conference Board—in collaboration with McKinsey & Company and the Global Association of Risk Professionals—recently conducted a series of interviews with corporate directors. This Director Notes summarizes the most important insights obtained from those interviews, with actual quotes from directors shown in italics. In particular, the report highlights a set of concrete emerging best practices for boards in this important area of responsibility. Interview participants included 20 members of U.S. public company boards, representing a variety of business sectors (including manufacturing, high tech, real estate, food services, retail, telecommunications, air travel, energy, health care, and banking) and ranging in size from $150 million to over $30 billion in revenues.