Aon Corp. more than doubled the size of its consulting operations with last year's $4.9 billion acquisition of human resources consultancy Hewitt Associates, although more than half of Aon's $8.5 billion in 2010 revenue came from its insurance brokerage. As Aon's CFO since 2008, Christa Davies steered the company through some of the choppiest markets in decades. Treasury & Risk recently asked Davies to talk about her priorities now.

T&R: The insurance brokerage industry is coming through a difficult period. How is Aon operating that business going forward and what is the outlook for 2011? Davies: I'd start with how we finished Q4 2010, which was a very strong finish to what was a difficult year in 2010. We had 3% organic revenue growth in our risk solutions business, which was the strongest performance we've had in three years. And we do believe we are going to grow organically, both in the risk solutions segment and in the HR solutions segment, in 2011. We think both the risk and HR issues for clients are becoming more and more complex, and their appetite and demand for these services is even greater than ever before, so we see the growth prospects being quite substantial over time. And the capabilities we have across our retail brokerage business, our reinsurance business and Aon Hewitt are even stronger than before in being able to help clients solve difficult problems.

T&R: Are there particular risks that your clients are showing renewed interest in going forward? Davies: There are a number of risks that are increasing in terms of prominence and interest from clients: political risk, environmental risk, sustainability, supply chain and global product management as firms become more global and offshore more often. Pandemic is a risk that we didn't have 10 years ago. So there are a number of risks that exist today that really didn't exist 10 years ago, and one of the ways in which we measure whether we are successful in helping a client is do we help improve earnings, do we help free up capital or do we help manage volatility on a client's balance sheet. If we can't demonstrate that we're doing one of those three things, then we're not clearly adding value in helping clients manage their risk.