With 2010 marking the Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc.'s 60th anniversary, it's a time to at once look back at the organization's history and ahead at a future of opportunity for risk managers, said RIMS President Terry Fleming.

In his remarks Monday morning opening RIMS' annual conference, Mr. Fleming noted that as the organization worked to spread the risk management message a decade ago, in many organizations, risk management was still something of a back-office profession.

“Ten years later, it couldn't be more different,” said Mr. Fleming, director of the division of risk management for Montgomery County, Md. With businesses, governments and others looking for answers to how to cope with changing times and new exposures, “There's never been a better time to be in risk management,” he said.

“It's up to us to seize the opportunity to push ourselves forward,” Mr. Fleming said, with RIMS supporting risk managers in those efforts.

The RIMS president identified five key objectives he said he's committed to moving forward at the organization.

The first is furthering efforts to maintain RIMS' leadership in enterprise risk management. “It's one thing to say the world is looking to us for guidance, but then we'd better have the right advice,” Mr. Fleming said.

Next is continuing to advocate for risk management-related legislation and regulation. “RIMS is becoming well known to Congress as the voice of the commercial insurance consumer,” Mr. Fleming said.

Mr. Fleming said his third objective is continuing to develop RIMS' international strategy. He noted that RIMS' international committee is developing a strategy to help U.S. companies with international business, and to assist those areas of the world in need of risk management education.

His fourth objective is supporting RIMS' efforts to continue to encourage students to enter risk management careers. “For students engaged in risk management study, we are providing free RIMS membership, including access to our job bank,” Mr. Fleming said.

Finally, he said he wants to encourage more peer-to-peer benchmarking and information sharing across the RIMS membership. “As RIMS members, we're really well positioned to put best practices into, well, practice,” the RIMS president said.

Mr. Fleming said information he gained by networking with fellow RIMS members helped him save his employer $1 million last year on insurance for a courthouse construction project. “There's always someone there who can help you,” he said. “You just have to make that connection.”

In her remarks Monday morning, Mary Roth, RIMS executive director, said the society's success “begins at the chapter level.”

Ms. Roth noted that the organization had 23 local chapters in 1960, 64 when she joined RIMS in 1985 and today has 80 worldwide. “We're growing and we're strong,” she said.

The RIMS executive director also stressed RIMS' efforts to bring new risk managers into the profession. As part of those efforts, more than 750 students have benefited from RIMS student involvement program, she said. Meanwhile, since the Spencer Educational Foundation Inc. was started in 1979, it has awarded $4 million in scholarships and $2 million in grants.

Even as the world has changed, four words—information, education, networking and advocacy—“have always reflected what RIMS stands for,” Ms. Roth said.