COSO Enterprise Risk Management: Understanding the New Integrated ERM Framework

Chapter 14. COSO ERM Going Forward

The preceding chapters in this book have attempted to introduce the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations’ enterprise risk management (COSO ERM) to a wide range of people in today’s enterprises, whether a public corporation, private company, or a not-for-profit business. The focus was on a wide range of professionals including members of the board of directors, senior management, internal audit, and many information technology (IT) professionals. After existing in a published draft form for some time, COSO ERM became “official” in very late 2004. While the prior chapters of this book talked about the importance of COSO ERM as a framework to help better manage and understand enterprise risks, what will happen next is always an unknown.

Using the model of the COSO internal controls framework as well as the current interest in risk management issues in many areas, this final chapter will speculate on where ERM will perhaps be moving in future years. Future speculation is always a difficult guess, but given the continuing trends in improved corporate governance and internal controls, there appears to be a growing interest and concern with the COSO ERM framework.

Future Prospect for COSO ERM

A possible direction of where COSO ERM may be going can be taken from its namesake, the COSO internal controls framework. As discussed in Chapter 3, the first COSO internal control framework report was released in 1992,^[1] but at first the report did not receive much ...