Linking risk management with news

I must say that the syllabus and reading materials I've been exposed to has helped me to gradually see how risk management comes into play in many situations. For example, the United Airlines incident a couple of days back where a passenger was dragged out screaming and injured, forced to leave on an overbooked flight - the first thing I thought of was that there was a lapse of controls.
There should be (or maybe there already is but it was not strictly implemented) a proper procedure to handle such potentially sticky situations. To manage the overbooked flight passengers before boarding to minimise friction with the customers and perhaps more rigorous training in customer care. Training and rehearsing are important to embed the risk culture across the organisation to ensure a consistent response to risk events.

Having been mostly on the service recipient end, I've never really thought about the importance of customer service training. But sitting in management meetings of a service provider, I've come to realise that it is becoming more imminent in today's increasingly demanding customer base. It is at every touch point with our external stakeholders that an impression is made, one bad experience with a cashier or security guard could significantly reduce an organisation's reputation in a customer's perception and be assured that that customer will talk. We often dismiss these ancillary functions as too minimal to care about, but it is these little details that make or break us.

Another ongoing news event which I think will end up being case studies in text books, is our very own scandal in our backyard - a certain troubled sovereign wealth fund. With so many local and foreign banks involved, it is hard to believe all these organisations had missed the signs and failed in their due diligence, or are their strategies too aggressive where their risk appetite is greater than their ultimate risk capacity?

Anyway, it has been an eye-opening experience thus far, with studying and shadowing in interviewing the risk owners. Risk events and opportunities are all around if we pay attention to our surroundings.