International law firm, DLA today announced that it has appointed Julia Graham to head up risk management. Julia, who was formerly group operational risk manager at Royal & SunAlliance, takes over the post from Clive Pracy who retired last year.
In 2000 DLA became one of the first law firms to recognise that a structured approach to risk management was necessary for leading law firms and demonstrated its commitment to this area by appointing a dedicated risk management specialist. As Director of Risk Management Julia will develop DLA’s policy, standards and framework in this areas, working across all offices in the UK, Europe and Asia.
Julia Graham has substantial risk management experience and worked for Royal & SunAlliance for over 25 years. While at Royal & SunAlliance Julia helped to significantly improve risk management standards and good practice by improving the risk management process, designing and implementing risk management assessments, designed the framework for business continuity and also developed a risk management process for a number of other areas, such as travel, insurance and outsourcing. Last year Julia was named ‘Industry Personality of the year’ at the 5th International Business Continuity Awards organized by the Business Continuity Institute and Continuity Insurance & Risk.
Julia sits on the board of the Business Continuity Institute (BCI), the Institute of Financial Services (ifs) and the Council of the Association of Insurers and Risk Managers (AIRMIC). She is a Fellow of the Chartered Insurers Institute and a Chartered Insurer.
In her role as Director of Risk Management, Julia will work closely with DLA’s specialist directors covering finance, human resources, business development and IT, and will manage a team of 6 staff.
Roger Lane-Smith, Senior Partner at DLA made this comment:
“Risk management is an extremely important part of our business and at DLA we demonstrated our commitment to this area when we created a dedicated directorship to manage risk some four years ago. Businesses such as DLA, which have an international remit, need a vigorous risk management strategy and I am delighted that Julia has joined DLA to enable us to fulfil our needs in this area. Julia has a significant amount of experience and I am confident that she will enhance the development of our risk management framework and strategy going forward.”
Julia Graham, Director of Risk Management, said:
“I am really thrilled to have been appointed by DLA. I have worked in the insurance industry for a long time and it is really refreshing to join another professional service provider, which is so committed to supporting good practice management of risk. DLA have already implemented many best practice standards and policies across a wide area of issues and I intend to continue to develop this. I see this as a new and exciting challenge and as DLA changes and grows as a business, risk management will be come an increasingly important area of management. I look forward to working with everyone at DLA on building a robust risk management programme that will support this growth and development.”
Julia Graham officially joined DLA on the 4 March and is based in London.
