English Appendix
Congratulations to 'Gerencia de Riesgos' and thanks for helping us to improve in ourprofession
JORGE DANIEL LUZZI
President of ALARYS
Ihave been a reader of Gerencia de
Riesgos y Seguros for many years. Still
fresh in mind is the sheer delight I felt
at reading the first copy that came into
my hands, many years back in the city of
Buenos Aires.
At that time the Association of Risk Managers of the Argentine Republic, ADARA, was taking its first steps, guided by a group of trailblazers in this incipient and essential field of knowledge. I well remember how eagerly we waited for each copy of Gerencia de Riesgos y Seguros, to update our view of world events with a Latin vision from our beloved Spain.
Back in those days there were precious few formal ways of gleaning knowledge on risk management. In general we were professionals from various areas seconded to this new discipline in our companies, picking up most of our knowledge as we went along.
Gerencia de Riesgos y Seguros, however, brought us an advanced European view. Its articles struck us as something new, boasting the highest technical and theoretical content and based on meticulous research. Furthermore most of them –a valuable trait this– were written by figures from the university world and Spanish professionals with a proven track record in risk management.
ALARYS is built up by six Risk Mangement
Associations from Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Mexico, Panama,Venezuela and Spain. It established
the professional «Risk Management»
grant scheme.
www.alarys.org
It was also practically the only publication dealing specifically with risk management in Spanish. Small wonder we were so keen to read it!
A little later, I began to travel about my beloved Ibero-America and had the chance to speak with other professionals from Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Uruguay, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, etc., who also received your publication and were taking similar steps to our own. It goes without saying that I then heard stories echoing my own experience. When I came into contact with the Spanish colleagues of AGERS I found out that this was a widespread feeling.
From 1989 to 1993 I lived and worked in Switzerland, and ITSEMAP continued to send the review from Argentina to the city of Basle, a boost to my career that I was singularly grateful for.
In 1994 when I was transferred to Sao Paulo, Brazil, I continued this custom and was lucky enough to become president of the Brazilian Risk Management Association (ABGR) at the moment when the review began to be published also in Portuguese. In the reaction of my Portuguese-speaking colleagues I was able to relive my own experience some years earlier when I first came into contact with the review.
After such a longstanding relationship with the publication, I began to feel almost a member of the family.Nothing could express the delight and honour I felt, therefore, when this subjective feeling of membership was formalised in the invitation to join the review’s editorial board.
I’m sure that Gerencia de Riesgos y Seguros must have run into the customary challenges of our profession in the past and successfully managed to surmount them.These challenge are if anything even sterner now. Like any review of its type it needs to continue to grow in content and quality but it also needs to do so in such a way as to make sense of the new strategic challenges thrown up by this unceasingly-changing profession.These challenges are legion, including compliance, corporate governance, audit and internal control, Basle II, Solvency II and enterprise risk management, i.e., the challenges that organisations and society as a whole are entrusting us with, and which it behoves us to solve with impeccable professionalism, ethics, dignity and creativity.
In short, after so many years of growing in tandem with this excellent publication, I’m proud of being able to pass on the following message on behalf of the members of the Latin-American Association of Risk Managers and Insurance (ALARYS) and also in my own name: Congratulations Gerencia de Riesgos y Seguros for your young and vibrant 100 first editions that always helped us advance in our thrilling profession and will continue to do so, we are sure, in the future.