Much of Michael D. Horvath's success as Simon Property Group Inc.'s senior vice president of risk management is owed to his ability to integrate the interests of the company's operating units, executive-level management and external business partners.

Prior to his joining Simon Property, the company's risk management department was viewed primarily as an expense center, tasked almost exclusively with buying insurance and largely walled off from other divisions.

“There wasn't a lot of interplay between the risk management department and the rest of the corporation,” Mr. Horvath said. “The complaint that I used to hear quite often in my early days with the firm was that in the past, calls to the risk management department had gone unanswered.”

Today, the department plays a crucial role in the execution of Simon Property's corporate and field-level goals, and Mr. Horvath said it is viewed as a “contributing corporate asset.”

Under his direction, the risk management staff reviews and approves the risk transfer and indemnification provisions in all Simon Property contract forms, including service and purchase agreements, lease forms and corporate loans.

Additionally, Mr. Horvath and his staff conduct regular status meetings with leaders of Simon Property's corporate divisions — including purchasing, capital markets, building design and construction, legal, finance and executive management — as well as its regional and local property managers.

Simon Property's risk management department reviewed and approved more than 30,000 certificates of insurance in 2012.

“Over 17 years now, we truly have become a consigliore to the company's various departments,” Mr. Horvath said.

James M. Barkley, Simon Property's general counsel, said the risk management department's integration into daily operational functions was due largely to Mr. Horvath's personal commitment to a thorough knowledge of the company's inner workings and its individual division leaders' needs and concerns.

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“When Mike appears before our internal management teams, it's clear that he understands Simon's business top to bottom,” Mr. Barkley said.

Mr. Horvath said a second key to his success has been the structure of his risk management department. Only three of the department's 14 members are employed directly by Simon Property. The rest are in-house risk management specialists employed by Simon's insurance brokers — primarily its casualty broker, Boardman, Ohio-based Donald P. Pipino Co. Ltd.

The staff also includes an in-house data management and analytics specialist from the company's property insurance broker Marsh Inc.

“Mike has created one of the most unique and effective uses of third-party staff support that I have come across in my nearly 40 years of risk management work,” said Steven Sachs, Baltimore-based real estate and hotel practice director at Willis North America Inc.

Stephanie Bridwell, Marsh's in-house client manager and data management specialist working under Mr. Horvath's direction, said although her paychecks do not say Simon Property, she and her counterparts at Pipino pride themselves on working in concert to further Simon Property's risk management interests.

“Even though we're coming into risk management from different perspectives, when we're here, we're one team,” Ms. Bridwell said.

“Other situations in other companies, where you have a dual or multibroker situation, they might not talk to each other,” said Paula Maxwell, a senior vice president at Pipino. “In Simon's case, Mike has developed this unit so that it's a cohesive effort. Our broader goal is Simon's success in the risk management arena, which we accomplish by working very closely together.”

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Mr. Horvath, who prefers to identify Pipino and Marsh as risk management service providers rather than brokers, said integrating the risk advisory solutions, loss prevention, data management and other services available through Simon Property's third-party partners was a natural choice, particularly in the case of Pipino, which has a background in managing retail property risks.

“By comparison, they're much smaller than the major brokerage houses, but they're industry experts when it comes to shopping centers,” Mr. Horvath said.

Having representatives of the company's brokers on-site has yielded positive results for Simon Property in its insurance renewals, Mr. Horvath said. At the end of 2012, he and his staff secured premium reductions for the company's primary property and casualty coverage while expanding its scope.

“Brokering the policies in harmony with the risk management solutions that they bring is a dynamic that's very difficult to replicate,” Mr. Horvath said of his department's structure. “I see fragments of the same approach in what some of my contemporaries have done, but for whatever reason, a lot of companies out there are only using their brokers as insurance buyers.”