Does risk management actually work? Anyone following the events of the past month, year or decade would be forgiven for thinking it is a load of the proverbial when major insurers and banks – supposedly the leaders in this field – are now writing off billions.

A wide range of people, including those in the risk management field, are now asking what went wrong, and seem to be turning to other concepts, such as resilience, to fill the gap. We’ll see whether these offer anything more to the quest to alter human behaviour for the better.

Prophetically, Tony Pooley, head of safety, environment and risk at Newcrest Mining, told Risk Management at the beginning of the year that risk professionals would be tested this year.

So is it just bollocks, or have risk management frameworks been implemented badly, paid lip service or been ignored? I think all.

A senior risk professional from the ANZ bank said last year that one of the biggest barriers they were facing to introducing ERM concepts such as encouraging a culture of open communication between line managers and executives who could do something about any problems were the risk managers themselves.

And now comes news, as reported by TheAustralian Financial Review, of the review commissioned by ANZ CEO Mike Smith, which reportedly calls for an overhaul of the bank’s risk management systems. Again, this conveniently appears to absolve the board from blame for the bank’s involvement with risky margin lenders and hedges with monoline insurers via credit default swaps.

Perhaps it is because of the intransigence of lower-level management, but ultimately the board has the power and responsibility to make sure that behaviour changes.

Equally, many risk and compliance professionals complain that the position they hold within organisations does not afford them authority to flag issues with senior management.

Certainly there seems to have been a lot of work done by regulators to try to instil better risk management – but it appears to have foundered when faced with market imperatives.

However, you also have to then ask the unknowable question: could it have been worse? It is hard to imagine, but perhaps part of the reason the US, apart from its size, was the primary source of the global credit crisis was that it has taken its own path on risk management since the corporate collapses earlier this decade, or left it to legislation to fix their woes.

All of this has been a long time coming. Many knew, and many were warning. Even if those that could do something about it were listening, ultimately, as one senior professional said last month: risk “is all about making decisions” and hopefully the right decisions.