Informal Risk Management

From Open Risk Manual

Definition and related terms

Informal Risk Management denotes any Risk Management practices of individuals or groups that rely primarily on intuitive decision-making rather than formal analysis based on defined methodologies and/or using elaborate analytical tools.

Heuristics

Informal risk management often relies on Rule of Thumb and other heuristic approaches. In the absence of information of other sources of insight heuristics and rules of thumb may well be the best or only approach available. Heuristic may also be useful as a tool to mitigate complexity and communicate difficult to internalize concepts.

Expert Based Models

Intuition and other hard to pin down knowledge can be integrated into a formal Risk Management Framework using Expert Based Models.

Issues and Challenges

  • Informal risk management may have unecessary levels of Bias in the sense that data based decision making may remove arbitrary beliefs (or cast them in a more objective light).

See Also