Enterprise risk management continues to gain favor among financial institutions, according to a survey released Thursday by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.

Deloitte’s “Navigating in a Changed World” found that 52% of the financial institutions surveyed reported they had an ERM program in place, and an additional 27% said they were implementing ERM.

In 2008, 36% of the respondents said they implemented ERM, while 23% said they were in the process of doing so.

ERM almost always covers several risk categories. For example, 98% of the respondents said ERM covered operational risk, 96%, credit risk; and 93%, market risk. ERM also increasingly covers liquidity risk, with 92% of the ERM programs in 2010 covering such risk, up from 82% two years ago.

The survey found that “fully 85% of executives felt that the value of their ERM program was greater than its cost, yet many executives found the value of ERM difficult to quantify.”

The report also found an increased role for chief risk officers at financial institutions. In the 2010 survey, 86% of respondents said they had a CRO or equivalent, up from 73% in the 2008 survey.

The report was based on the responses of 131 financial institutions around the world, including banks, insurers and asset managers.

The survey indicates that financial institutions may need their risk management programs to be more flexible to adapt to new business models and changing regulatory environments, Deloitte said in a statement.

“During the last few years, risk management assumptions and methods have been challenged as never before, and will be facing even more rigorous requirements in the future,” Edward Hida, editor of the report and global leader-risk and capital management at Deloitte, said in the statement.

“Regulators have numerous risk-focused efforts on the horizon including Basel III, systemic risk initiatives and various implementation efforts related to Dodd-Frank Act. As a result, many institutions have—and are—strengthening their risk management governance models, and there is likely to be a continued focus on enhancing risk management data and analytics capabilities,” according to the survey.

The survey is available at www.deloitte.com.