Interview of Animesh Deshpande, IRMCert Level 2 Qualified, Management Consulting Analyst, Accenture – India
How did you get your job?
I started working post my MBA as a consultant in the Enterprise Risk team at one of the Big4 accounting firms. I was fortunate enough to work for leading clients under the supervision of my seniors from whom I learned a lot. I was part of end to end risk transformation projects in various sectors such as oil and gas, automotive, manufacturing, consumer goods, etc., across key geographies. In the course of a few years I could cover the entire value chain in Enterprise RIsk Management through different client engagements.
What’s a typical day like as an ERM consultant?
In any stage of the project there are a lot of stakeholder discussions and meetings which are conducted. So, a typical day involves managing the calendar well and being prepared for the meetings to be conducted during the day. Usually in such meetings ERM consultants take the lead to understand client’s challenges either in terms of roadblocks in implementation of ERM best practices over existing ones based on client’s ERM maturity or suggesting how ERM can leverage already existing business processes and workflows in case a significant change is required.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Since it is carried out at the “enterprise” level, it gives central visibility about the client’s most pressing issues and the actions that they have taken in the past to mitigate them. Co-developing mitigation strategy with the clients gives you a good experience of solving key business challenges with the available resources in hand. Each project and each scenario provides a unique business case for you to learn from with the leaders who are experts in their own domains.
What are the challenges?
The key is to learn, unlearn and relearn as quickly as possible and provide a customized solution each time to each stakeholder. Typical ERM engagement can never be a plug and play kind of a solution and we need to address all client expectations and requests while benchmarking with the ERM best practices laid out in various international ERM standards and local regulatory requirements.
What made you decide to study the International Certificate in Financial Services Risk Management?
I wanted to understand the nuances of financial risk management. I had done my MBA with finance specialisation and had gained experience within the Enterprise Risk Management domain. This looked like a good professional certification to pursue.
What has it taught you that you can immediately put into practice?
While studying this course I could understand the timeline of how ERM evolved over time and how the nuances of risk management might change across the globe depending upon the particular International standard (or standards) a company benchmarks itself with. With respect to financial services, understanding major world events with detailed analysis presented as case studies was quite interesting and informative.
What would you say to other people considering studying for the qualification?
IRM provides many resources to prepare for the exam. These resources are helpful for someone who has little to no experience in this domain. For people who have good experience in this domain, these resources are very well curated and one would enjoy reading them. Especially the two course books which IRM provides with the course material are quite good and they should be completed before picking up the study guides for respective modules.
Top tips
Recruiters look for relevant professional qualifications, IRM certifications will help you standout.
Pursuing these qualifications also gives recruiters confidence about your proficiency in the subject matter. Studying with the IRM provides a very sharp learning curve and a good platform to build your career.
This interview was taken from the IRM’s official website
