Take Kenneth Cole. Back in the early days of the Arab Spring, the company’s founder tweeted something insensitive that made light of the violent revolution that was taking place. “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online,” tweeted Mr. Cole. The response was outrage from people worldwide on social media platforms and even the mainstream press detailing how the company had goofed.

Now, the fallout from this reputation wasn’t as financially damaging as, say, the PR nightmare following Toyota’s poor handling of its massive recall in 2010. But plenty of others have felt the increasingly influential power of social media. Social Media Influence highlights the recent bad press Carnival Cruises and McDonalds have received.

Fortunately, they also have some advice for companies who suffer such a fate. Enter the social media crisis response plan. They have created the flow chart below to help guide your decision making after the worst occurs. Click here for a larger version then print it out, laminate it and put it on your wall.

On the 10-year anniversary of September 11, we took a look at some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history. Those attacks that have been most spectacular in nature — such as the unique means used in 9/11 and the U.S.S. Cole bombing and horror of rampages such as those in Mumbai and Norway — have been the most memorable in recent times. But a majority of the deaths that have ever been attributed to terrorism have come during old-fashioned car bombs.

To illustrate just how deadly some of the worst car bombs have been, FreeInsuranceQuotes.com created an infographic that catalogs the devastation. Above is a snapshot of the image. You can find the full version after the jump.

Click here for full-size.

Of course, we weren’t the only ones to come up with a list of 2012′s top risks. Among others, one organization that did was insurance broker Willis. Its subject experts did write ups on 18 different areas of risk. There are links to each in their “WillisWire Emerging Risks Round-up.”

• Energy:  “Fracking”
• Environmental: “Fracking”
• Mining: “Contingent Business Interruption”
• Supply Chain Interruption: “Issues at Subtier Suppliers”
• Trade Credit – “Political-Economic Turmoil”
• Financial Institutions: “Bradley Manning 2.0”
• Terrorism: “Cyber Terror”
• Aerospace: “Space Tourism”
• Power & Utilities: “Sodium-Sulfur Batteries”
• Health Care: “Booming Physician Employment”
• Renewable Energy: “Uncertainty Caused by National Energy Policies”
• Captives – “Transfer Pricing”
• Political Risk: “Continued Unrest in Egypt & Libya”
• Analytics: “Over-Reliance on Models”
• D&O: “International Cooperation of Regulators”
• Engineering: “‘Hold Harmless’ Legal Contracts”
• Life Sciences: “’No Fault’ Compensation for Clinical Trial Patients”
• Employee Safety: “Obesity Epidemic”

More evidence that rates are headed north surfaced yesterday. The latest quarterly property/casualty survey from the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers came out. And as the chart above illustrates, there’s no surprise here: rates are on the rise in the face of insurer catastrophe losses, falling reserves and rising underwriting discipline.

Commercial property/casualty pricing rebounded in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers’ quarterly Commercial P/C Market Index Survey. On average, small, medium and large account pricing increased 2.8 percent last quarter, compared with a -5.4 percent decline in the same period last year. The market hit its low point in the third quarter of 2007 with an average -13 percent decrease and has been slowly clawing its way back up ever since.

“It’s clear from the data that the market continued its upward momentum in the fourth quarter,” said Ken A. Crerar, president/CEO of The Council. ““Capacity was still strong, but prices rose in the face of declining underwriting profitability, dwindling reserves and huge catastrophic losses.”

Another key finding was, as anticipated, the effect that RMS 11 is having on property pricing.

Carriers were “reviewing all property based on RMS11 modeling,” said one broker from the Southeast. “The RMS CAT Modeling for property was used widely — more property insurers since the third quarter,” said a broker from the Northeast. “Many clients saw this for the first time.”

Large buyers fared better than their smaller counterparts but there were increases across the board. All told, here are the full results broken down by account size.

If Aaron Rodgers switched to Allstate, he would’ve had protection from mayhem, like the Giants.

This of course is based on the insurer’s “mayhem” ad series.

In fact, they have become such infamous and popular commercials that BusinessInsurance.org ranked it first in its list of the 10 best insurance commercials.

But for all our long-winded efforts to show what legal risks there may be, it looks like we could have done it better with just a chart. Check out this amazing infographic from Morrison & Foerster’s Socially Aware Blog. (via Social Times)

Yup, there are still legal, among other, risks to manage.

But you’re a risk manager, right? So they should be no problem. Just use this as a guide.

And this isn’t a result that is just naturally trending (slightly) downward, says the IMB. The agency claims that the numbers would have been higher if naval patrols near the the coast of Somali, the global hotbed of pirate attacks.

In the last quarter of 2011 alone, pre-emptive strikes by international navies disrupted at least 20 Pirate Action Groups (PAGs) before they could become a threat to commercial fleets. The last quarter of 2010 saw 90 incidents and 19 vessels hijacked; in 2011, those numbers fell to 31 and four, respectively.

“These pre-emptive naval strikes, the hardening of vessels in line with the Best Management Practices and the deterrent effect of Privately Contracted Armed Security Personnel, have all contributed to this decrease,” said Captain Pottengal Mukundan, Director of the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre (IMB PRC), which has been monitoring piracy worldwide since 1991. “The role of the navies is critical to the anti-piracy efforts in this area.”

There are more positive findings.

“Only” 802 crewmembers were taken hostage in 2011, down from more than 1,000 in both of the past two years and a high of 1,174 in 2010. And only 10 crewmembers were taken hostage/kidnapped, which was down from the 27 who suffered that fate last year and way below the combined 105 taken hostage in 2007 and 2008.

Here is a chart showing the attacks by the type of violence the criminals used on the crew in recent years.

As I noted in Risk Management magazine in November, the positive naval efforts to deter pirates around Somali has has led to somewhat of a whack-a-mole situation. As Somali pirates have been curtailed, a new threat has emerged in the Gulf of Guinea off Benin on the other side of Africa.

That is one of many reasons that these mildly positive numbers shouldn’t be celebrated. Piracy remains a major challenge, and it has taken a significant naval presence just to essentially stop the figures from increasing. The real goal, of course, is to start creating a real downward trend — not just a possible statistical blip of 6 fewer attacks.

Lastly, here are two graphs showing where the 439 recorded attacks in 2011 occurred and one that shows what types of ships are being attacked.

Pirate Attacks in 2011 by Location

Pirate Attacks in 2011 by Vessel Type

Of course, since it is a qualitative term that has its foundations in “processes” and “methodologies” and “tone from the top” and all sorts of other barely-real-things, there is never any actual answer to the question “what is the company’s risk culture?” It’s just kind of a general, nebulous idea that people like to throw around. “We should be more proactive in the optimization of our risk culture,” is something I wouldn’t be shocked to hear an executive say.

This isn’t to marginalize the use of the phrase.

It’s not useless by any means, and what it actually stands for is very valuable to ensuring that the organization is paying attention to risk. If talking about “risk culture” is what you need to do in meetings to get people to listen, then that’s fine. But if you’re the one who is actually trying to better embed risk management into an organization’s decision making, you should just have a good idea of what you actually mean. Because unless you realize what actually drives risk culture, you may as well just being trying to improve “corporate happiness” or “employee satisfaction levels.”

Over at the blog Operational Risk Management, Ed provides a good breakdown of what we’re actually talking about when we talk about risk culture. Namely, it is about honest communication and employing workers who don’t fear reprisal for telling the truth.

A risk culture begins and ends with a human ability to communicate effectively with other humans. The human behaviors associated with communicating risk has all to do with the ability of one person to know the truth and to effectively tell the other accurately and effectively what the risk is and how it could impact the business. The trouble is, most organizations fail to spend enough time doing exactly that and doing it without fear.

What kind of fear? The fear that by telling your supervisor you might offend them. The fear that by questioning the co-worker about their decision that you will alienate them. The fear that by uncovering a fellow workers risky behaviors to the rest of the team that you will jeopardize the overall mission.

Guess what people; the ability or lack of ability by a human to communicate risk factors to each other with the truth and without the fear of judgement or retribution is why you either live or die. This is the reason why your organization continues to flourish or rots from the inside out. You see, the risk management environment in your team, unit, office location or FOB has all to do with communicating the truth in an effective way.

This is a good way to think about your “risk culture.” Do your employees talk truthfully, and often, about risk?

As the concept of risk management increasingly becomes less isolated from the concept of simply running a business, the need for terms like risk culture will diminish. Eventually, we will realize that saying something like “that company has a poor risk culture” is synonymous with saying “that company is dysfunctional.” And if nobody is talking to one another honestly about potential problems — or missed opportunities — then that’s exactly what the company is.

Ernst & Young offers its advice to insurers that want to succeed in the year ahead.

Execute flexible approaches to manage uncertain conditions. To implement fluid strategies in an environment of multiple uncertainties, an insurer’s operational capabilities, infrastructure and corporate culture must support flexible, rapid and well-governed decision-making, thereby assuring agile performance with accountability. Diligent monitoring of changes in loss exposures and loss development drivers will guide flexible adjustments to risk management and risk pricing.

Anticipate, understand and address the impact of prospective regulations. Insurers must assess the impact of new regulations and accounting changes prior to implementation. They should consider enhancing the sophistication, articulation and deployment of their risk management standards and related systems, as compared to their current regulatory and reporting environments.  E&Y states that those insurers who fail to understand the full impact of regulations and new accounting standards may lose competitive advantage.

Comprehend and act upon changing insurance buying behaviors. Gaining a clear understanding of the customer will improve the chances of marketing success, notes E&Y. The buying behaviors and risk profiles of tomorrow’s customers will likely bear little resemblance to those today. Identifying, assessing and capitalizing on the characteristics of tomorrow’s customers underscores the need to tailor products, services and distribution channels to their specialized needs, notes the report.

Increase investments in core systems to bolster growth and profitability.  Insurers face mounting pressures to modernize core insurance systems such as claims, policy administration, underwriting and billing. Competitors have set the stage for this need for improvement, along with heightened customer expectations and, above all, increasing costs to maintain and upgrade systems. “Faced with limited investment alternatives yielding an attractive return, insurers are investing in themselves to position their operations for growth and improved profitability,” notes the firm.

Apply business analytics to address difficult top-line growth conditions. E&Y states that an uncertain economic environment will force insurers to apply business analytics across the value chain can glean deeper information on customer markets, underwriting segment profitability and claims management. Insights gained from analytics can then guide both strategy development and improved decision making, notes the firm.