Laying the foundations in Europe
Van Santen has lobbied on important industry issues on his way to building strong associations
by Michael Bradford

Thierry van Santen's passion for creating new processes has been a boon for risk management associations.

"I like being a builder," said Mr. Van Santen, the executive vice president of the business risk management department at Groupe DANONE in Paris. "And when I am done, I build something else."

He put those skills to work in the early 1990s as one of the organizers of the Association pour le Management des Risques et des Assurances de l'Enterprise, the French risk management association. When he took over leadership of the association, it was a bare bones operation.

"It had no staff, nothing," Mr. Van Santen recalls. To bring attention to the group and raise money to employ staff, he organized the first Rencontres de l'AMRAE, the association's annual meeting.

Mr. Van Santen served as AMRAE's president from 1992 to 1998 and established the group as one of Europe's premier risk management associations. But then his interest turned to another group where he could indulge his interest in building organizations.

When he stepped down from the AMRAE post, Mr. Van Santen began what has become a long association with the Federation of European Risk Management Associations. He was elected a board member in 1998 and later became a vice president. In 2001, he was elected FERMA's president and served in that post until 2005.

He does a great job working on a lot of issues that are important to European risk managers, said Marie-Gemma Dequae, FERMA's current president.

Tireless campaigner

Ms. Dequae praised Mr. Van Santen as a tireless promoter of risk management and said he has encouraged a particularly sophisticated level of the profession. That is evident from the work he has done at his own company to establish an enterprise risk management program, she said.

FERMA was a far-less visible organization when Mr. Van Santen joined its board 10 years ago. When he moved into the vice president post, he was asked to develop a new strategy for the group, which included a significant reorganization for the association, a new constitution and the rejuvenation of FERMA's biennial conference.

FERMA was due an overhaul, Mr. Van Santen said. There were no staff, and FERMA's activities were limited mostly to a conference held in Monte Carlo every two years, he added.

"We needed staff, we needed an office, we needed governance rules and we needed more money," he said.

A new FERMA board was established, a constitution written and governance rules put into place. Offices were located and the group began to expand. Florence Bindelle eventually was hired as FERMA's executive manager and the association established an Internet presence with its Web site.

A big part of FERMA's new direction was the transformation of its conference into the FERMA Forum, which now moves to a different city each time it is held, Mr. Van Santen said. Interest in the event soared, and it now draws more than 1,000 attendees as it has become the second-largest risk management and insurance conference in the world.

During Mr. Van Santen's tenure as FERMA's president, the group expanded its country membership to 14 from eight and its roster of individual members to 5,000 from 1,500.

Under Mr. Van Santen's leadership, FERMA also launched its seminar, a sort of mini-conference that takes place during the years when the forum is not held and is open to members at no charge. The most recent--held this year in Brussels, Belgium--drew 168 attendees, he said.

Mr. Van Santen now serves as a FERMA board member in charge of European affairs. In that role, he spends much of his time working with the European Commission on issues related to Solvency II, the risk-based capital regulatory scheme scheduled for implementation in 2012.

His efforts paid off recently when the European Parliament agreed to consider the unique status of captives in the Solvency II framework. The Parliament in October approved special amendments that will allow captives, under certain conditions, to operate under a simplified solvency regime. "But we are not at the end yet," he said. "We are not sure that it solves 100% of the problem. But this is a step in the right direction."

Mr. Van Santen was one of the people who warned the market early about the potential pitfalls of Solvency II, said Marie-Astrid van Buuren, managing director of Marsh France S.A. in Paris, and one of Mr. Van Santen's brokers. "Now everyone with small undertakings such as captives are moving to see what can be done."