
Director of Risk Management
Required skills
- enterprise risk management
- ERM
- risk assessment
- insurance coverage
- litigation exposure
- organizational risk
- risk ownership
- escalation paths
- risk management team
- claims handling
Nice to have
- fraud
- incident rates
Role summary
PLS is seeking a Director of Risk Management to build its enterprise risk management (ERM) function from the ground up. This role involves partnering with Legal, insurance brokers/carriers, and executive leadership to identify, quantify, and mitigate organizational, insurance, and litigation risks. Key responsibilities include conducting comprehensive risk assessments, designing the ERM framework and organizational structure, hiring and leading a risk management team, developing defense strategies for specific legal precedents, optimizing the insurance program to reduce costs, and launching a live risk register with executive reporting. The ideal candidate possesses strong analytical, strategic, negotiation, and relationship-building skills.
- Complete a comprehensive risk assessment across PLS entities within 90 days.
- Design and stand up PLS's enterprise risk management (ERM) framework and organizational structure within 6 months.
- Hire, onboard, and stand up a risk management team within 6–9 months.
- Build and operationalize a negligent-selection/broker-liability defense strategy with Legal within 6 months.
- Optimize the company's insurance program and reduce total cost of risk by [X]% within 12 months (baseline to be established in month 1–2).
- Launch a live risk register with quarterly executive reporting within 6 months, ongoing thereafter.
- Honesty/Integrity — Gives leadership an unvarnished view of organizational risk, even when it is uncomfortable.
- Analysis Skills — Quantifies exposure across insurance, litigation, and operational risk to prioritize what matters most.
- Strategic Thinking — Translates a fragmented risk landscape into an organizational structure and multi-year mitigation strategy.
- Building Relationships — Builds trusted working relationships with Legal, insurance brokers/carriers, and executive leadership to execute strategy collaboratively.
- Persuasion/Negotiation — Negotiates coverage terms with insurance carriers and builds internal buy-in for new risk controls.
- Organization and Planning — Sequences a build-out spanning assessment, structure design, team hiring, and insurance renegotiation.
- Proactivity — Identifies and moves to mitigate emerging risks before they become claims or litigation.
- Composure Under Pressure — Stays level-headed and decisive when managing active claims, litigation, or crisis-level exposure.
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