Living on the ceiling

When Iain Wright accepted the position of Chief Risk Officer at Old Mutual Wealth’s office in London last year, he knew it was going to be a challenge.

The company’s £9.5bn London-listed parent company Old Mutual Plc was in the process of breaking up into four legally separate entities spanning Africa, the USA and the UK.

That would most likely result in Old Mutual Wealth seeking its own listing on the London Stock Exchange, and required a complete shakeup of the organisation’s risk management function.

“From being in an environment where we have a group risk function at the PLC level and risk managers in each of the underlying businesses,” he explains, “I came in to build a group risk function at the Old Mutual Wealth level.”