All the BELRIM participants of the RIMAP examination in October, succeeded in obtaining their RIMAP certification. Congrats! Also Emily Cox (SOLVAY) succeeded and we asked her some questions about her experiences in the current risk management world and how she experienced the RIMAP examination itself.
Below some questions and answers from Emily:
- What do you do in your company? I have been at Solvay for 3.5 years now. I mainly look after the day-to-day responsibilities with our largest insurance program, property & business interruption insurance, but I’ve also supported other lines of insurance over the years (marine cargo, political risk, Asia Pacific, European, and Latin American local policies). I’ve also helped coordinate more organization with renewal administration (streamlining & improved tracking of invoices, etc.). My favorite part of my job is loss prevention prioritization and engineering as this was my background before starting at Solvay. I love seeing our sites improve their risks and maintain resilience in our industry.
- Why did you apply for the RIMAP certification? I applied for RIMAP because I heard about this certification during the 2019 End of Year Holiday Party at BELRIM. After hearing about it and doing some more research online about the certification it sounded like an excellent learning opportunity and to build credibility in not only my company, but within the insurance industry. My boss and I discussed the opportunity and we also decided that this should be one of my objectives to achieve this year as it is good career development within my current role.
- How were the preparations? The preparations were time consuming. About 1 month before the exam I would spend an extra 1-2 hours each night reading 1-2 chapters in the reading material. I felt Blocks 1 and 2 were quite repetitive in some of their topics but I still learned a few new tricks here and there. Blocks 3 and 4 were easier to read as I found I was getting even more new ideas from these sections. In the end, I felt it was necessary to read all 4 Blocks as some questions were very particular to the learning materials in all sections. I’m overall very happy with the study material and was glad I could walk away with more ideas for my company concerning Risk Management.
- Did you get support to do this exam? Yes, BELRIM was kind enough to offer a testing date where an approved supervisor was available (instead of searching for yourself a different supervisor).
- Was the parcours clear for you? The course was very clear. It was very easy to go on the ANZIIF website to register online and access the study material. The test was also very clear and easy to access via the ANZIIF website.
- FERMA is talking about a follow up, ‘a continuous professional development programme’? I thought this was already in the scope of the RIMAP certification. I believe the continuous professional development portion of the RIMAP certification is a very important part as the insurance/risk management industry is constantly changing with the different trends. I regularly sign up for webinars that sound of interest to my job, so I actually do not believe it would take any additional effort to meet the CPD requirements of maintaining the certification.
- How was the exam itself? The exam was well balanced. I am happy that it was multiple choice as there were many topics in the reading that I could tell would be very difficult if they were in ‘short answer’ or ‘essay’ format. There were questions that I noticed if you did not read the study material, that it would be very difficult to use deductive reasoning.
- I highly encourage others to take this exam as you may get some new interesting ideas for your own company and I found several of the articles referenced in the reading material to be very interesting reads even from a personal perspective. There was one article I enjoyed the most, named “A leaders framework for decision making”.
We thank Emily for the information and we hope that this will challenge others to follow this FERMA RIMAP Certification trajectory!
Do you also want to seize your opportunity to become the 21st century Risk Professional? BELRIM provides supervised sessions, especially for BELRIM members. If you wish to apply you can go to the FERMA RIMAP Certification website, or let us know if you are interested!
