LOS ANGELES — Though there may be “closer alignment” in the perceptions of senior executives and risk professionals about the role risk management can play in strategic planning, the value that risk professionals can deliver to their organizations is still not yet being fully exploited, a new survey shows.

The 10th annual “Excellence in Risk Management” survey, co-authored by Marsh Inc. and the Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc., found that 52% of C-suite executives and 47% of risk professionals agree that the top reason why risk management should be included in strategic planning and executive activities is to identify and assess risks arising from those activities.

In addition, 46% of C-suite respondents and 40% of risk professionals agree that the risk managers should provide input into their organizations' strategic planning process.

However, only 15% of risk professionals and 20% of the C-suite respondents said the risk manager is a full member of the strategic planning and/or execution teams, according to the survey, which was released Monday at the 2013 RIMS conference in Los Angeles.

“The big disconnect that we saw was that while the C-suite wants risk management to be more engaged in strategic planning and execution, the C-suite is not resourcing it properly,” said Carol Fox, director of strategic and enterprise risk practice at RIMS, in an interview conducted prior to the news conference where the survey results were revealed.

“The C-suite is not incenting risk managers for what they expect from them. They need to change the compensation and budget structure,” Ms. Fox said.

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Though they may not be in the same order, the fact that the top three areas of focus for the C-suite and risk managers were the same in this year’s survey shows that risk professionals are making progress in gaining greater recognition of the value that risk management can provide to their organizations, said Yvette Connor, managing director at Marsh, who also was interviewed prior to the news conference.

In particular, both the C-suite and risk professionals identified training and education, strengthening enterprise risk management capabilities, and improving use of data and analytics as the top three areas of focus for developing their organizations’ risk management capabilities in 2013, the survey found.

“But when you dive deeper, you can still see the disconnect,” Ms. Connor said. “The C-suite would like risk managers to pursue an evolution from managing the budget of insurance and claims expense to a more strategic enterprise view of risk management. But some risk managers are uncomfortable with that because it involves addressing some risks that may be uninsurable.”

“The challenge is for risk managers to become more engaged in operations and to become strategic advisers to the C-suite,” Ms. Fox said.

“If risk managers back themselves into the corner by focusing on managing contracts, procurement does the same thing,” Ms. Connor noted. They could risk being perceived as redundant in their organizations, she said.

“A lot of risk managers don’t know how to describe the value they bring to their organizations,” Ms. Fox said. As a result, they often are stereotyped as being “transactional” rather than “strategic,” she said.

“If risk managers don’t speak the language of finance, they’re not in the game,” Ms. Connor said.