The importance of the Chief Risk Officer role has grown exponentially in recent years. Across sectors as varied as financial services, critical infrastructure, telecommunications, utilities and healthcare, the risk function has moved well beyond safeguarding the organisation and keeping pace with regulatory change. It has become a strategic enabler of growth, and the modern Chief Risk Officer is expected to act as an architect of possibility, working alongside the Chief Executive Officer and the wider executive team to navigate an increasingly complex regulatory environment and help the organisation achieve its strategic goals. Poor or immature risk practices have fast become an organisation’s Achilles heel, which is why appointing the right Chief Risk Officer has never mattered more.

Our Risk and Compliance Partner, Jonathan Harper treats every risk search individually, assessing the organisation’s culture, regulatory landscape, and technology and data maturity, together with the specific risks in play across credit, liquidity and market risk, as well as operational, regulatory and reputational risk. Senior risk appointments vary significantly in complexity and in the access they provide to relevant talent pools and understanding what is keeping the board awake at night, and what the Chief Executive Officer’s top priorities are for the year ahead, shapes every brief from the outset.

Risk maturity, risk strategy and the robustness of risk frameworks and policy differ significantly between industries. Risk in financial services, and banking in particular, is generally far more mature and complex than in sectors such as retail, manufacturing and construction, and how regulated an industry is, and how complex that regulatory environment is, matters just as much, varying significantly between financial services, telecommunications, and energy and utilities. The most important question, and often the one organisations overlook, is whether risk is positioned as an enabler of strategic growth and revenue or treated purely as a control function.

The risk management landscape is shifting significantly, with sustained demand for highly strategic Chief Risk Officers who can navigate an increasingly complex regulatory climate while building the positive risk culture that underpins business growth, together with a growing need for technical expertise as generative artificial intelligence reshapes risk modelling, analytics and automated, data driven decision making.

The risk management practice at Omera Partners is sector agnostic. Given the complexity of risk management in financial services, and banking in particular, many of its key Chief Risk Officer appointments continue to be made in that sector, alongside a strong track record across superannuation, insurance, telecommunications, utilities, critical infrastructure, retail and healthcare, wherever the Chief Risk Officer sits on the executive leadership team.

Market perspective

Organisations are currently navigating the highest level of geopolitical uncertainty since the Second World War, a backdrop that is now feeding directly into the economic outlook. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s most recent Statement on Monetary Policy points to further softening in economic growth through the remainder of 2026, linked in part to global energy market disruption and the lagged effect of recent interest rate rises, and boards increasingly expect their Chief Risk Officer to hold a genuine view on how that backdrop feeds into credit, liquidity and market risk.

Both regulators (APRA and ASIC) are threading a needle, reducing red tape for compliant firms while sharply increasing enforcement intensity where consumer harm is found, all against a backdrop of subdued growth and cost-of-living pressure. Jointly with ASIC, APRA are looking at simplifying the Financial Accountability regime (FAR) with fewer up-front reporting requirements and materially highly thresholds as part of the governments “Better Regulation Agenda”. ASIC has sharpened its enforcement priorities which are sharply up in volume which has double investigations and court actions.

Australia’s approach to artificial intelligence governance is still taking shape as well, with the National AI Plan and the National AI Centre’s Guidance for AI Adoption superseding the earlier voluntary standard, and a new Australian Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute now testing systems and identifying regulatory gaps. Executive risk leaders must navigate all of these pressures while maintaining organisational safety and creating pathways for growth, and risk is fast becoming one of the most strategic appointments on the executive leadership team.

Questions boards and chief executives should ask before appointing a Chief Risk Officer

1.   Are we briefing for the Chief Risk Officer this business will need in three years, or the one that would have been a safe appointment three years ago?

2.   Has this leader been tested through a genuine economic slowdown, not just a market cycle, and can they demonstrate how they held credit, liquidity and market risk together when growth stopped covering for weaker fundamentals?

3.   If a critical service provider failed tomorrow, would our Chief Risk Officer already know it, or would we find out from the regulator first?

4.   How would the incoming Chief Risk Officer calibrate regulatory relationships: as a defensive necessity, or as a source of competitive intelligence and earned trust that can be converted into commercial outcomes for the organisation?

5.   What is our philosophy on setting risk guardrails that flex with growth, rather than fixed rules that require constant exception management?

6.   How do we expect risk to sit within the technology and data architecture itself: as a downstream review function, or as something engineered in at the design stage?

Working with Omera Partners

Omera Partners advises boards and chief executives on senior risk leadership appointments across financial services and banking, superannuation, insurance, telecommunications, utilities, critical infrastructure, retail and healthcare. When a single appointment can determine whether an organisation navigates an increasingly complex regulatory environment while continuing to grow with confidence, the search deserves an executive search firm with genuine depth across the risk function as a whole. That is the standard Omera Partners brings to every Chief Risk Officer appointment.

‍

‍