The creation of a risk community within Lafarge S.A. has been a significant achievement for Laurent Barbagli.

The company does not have centralized risk committees but does have strong risk awareness within its various functions. And as group risk and insurance manager, Mr. Barbagli has worked with the company's various competencies and projects to help build a community for the sharing of information about risks.

These steps, taken in conjunction with moves to improve the company's risk audits, have helped the company better share information and promote risk management.

“We wanted to build a risk community,” Mr. Barbagli said.

“Within my function we are risk managers of insurable risk, but that doesn't mean we are only about insurance,” he said. “We need to work with other functions and to be a full member of the second line of defense of risk management” alongside compliance and safety functions, among others.

“We need to be aligned with other functions to support risk management on the ground,” Mr. Barbagli said.

As a result of this focus, a database tool was developed that aims to build synergies with other key risk functions within Lafarge such as health and safety, performance, engineering and audit.

As part of the process, Mr. Barbagli worked to develop a model for data management that collates Lafarge's claims information at the country level for the territories in which Lafarge operates.

Online assistance is given to support staff in various countries to declare accurate values, and information then is forwarded to both internal and external stakeholders, such as loss adjusters.

The tool progressively is being expanded to all lines of insurance, Mr. Barbagli said.

Property damage, product liability, construction all-risks, marine cargo and charterers liability claims are all captured by the tool.

About 300 claims are declared in the tool each year. The database thus enables the company to track the evolution of trends and helps it identify and manage risk.

In addition, it provides insurance markets with a better understanding about the company's risks.

“Process and administration may not be one of the exciting things about insurance, but if you make it like a data management process it is more interesting,” Mr. Barbagli said.

And if you can build a truly benchmarked database, that can have benefits that extend beyond insurance, he said.

The tool aims to give business units better understanding of risk in order to promote good risk management across the organization and has had other benefits too, he said. “Big data is gold if you use it not only for insurance,” he said.

For example, Mr. Barbagli said, examination of the product liability trends seen using the tool prompted discussion about product quality within the company.

The robust nature of the database of claims and losses also has allowed Mr. Barbagli and his team to provide high-quality information to business units within Lafarge and the company's external partners.

For example, analysis of the claims involving new products produced by Lafarge have shown them to have a normal claims experience, thus aiding the process of innovation at the company, Mr. Barbagli said.

This year a project has been launched to include all risk audit recommendations on the intranet part of the tool provided to each country plant.

Other ways in which Mr. Barbagli and his team have sought to develop the risk community within Lafarge include the organization of workshops intended to enhance the synergies between various risk functions of the group.

For example, workshops with Lafarge's trading department address the selection of tugs and barges used by the group and enabled the company to adapt its shipping policy.

And workshops with group engineering committees to discuss plant construction addressed seismic risk mitigation in plant design.

In France, a workshop with a leading French construction insurer enhanced understanding of Lafarge's product risk profile.

Chris Baudouin, CEO of the global client network at Aon Risk Solutions in Chicago, who has worked closely with Mr. Barbagli for many years, said among Mr. Barbagli's strengths is his “ability to engage with and work alongside not only such diverse functions as engineering, safety and finance/treasury, but also especially diverse geographies with many different levels of risk management knowledge, understanding and importance.”