Managing a wide assortment of risks is an imperative part of running any modern company. From payment fraud to operational exposures—to, in one industry-specific situation, potential injuries to participants in clinical drug trials—the variety and prevalence of risks can leave corporate risk managers feeling like they're playing an endless game of Whac-A-Mole.

"Fraud moves very, very quickly," says Todd Wachob, senior risk manager at Paychex, which implemented a fraud-prevention program that won one of our 2024 Alexander Hamilton Awards in Operational Risk Management & Fraud Prevention. "We're seeing exponential growth in fraud activity year over year. It's always changing, but it's also always growing."

Battling the complexity of a rapidly evolving risk environment requires hard work and creative thinking. Our two winning projects demonstrate both of these characteristics in spades.

• Gold Award:  Paychex decided to tackle fraud prevention head-on, internally building a tool that could detect fraud attempts, whether perpetrated against the company or against its payroll customers. FraudFighter pulls data from a range of source systems, analyzes potentially problematic activities such as changes to payees' bank account information, and presents fraud analysts with any issues it deems likely to be actual fraud. It also automatically provides the analysts with context that helps them effectively and efficiently respond to attacks.
• Silver Award:  Meanwhile, biopharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb found, after years of growth and acquisitions, that it was running three captive insurance companies to protect the business from certain types of claims. It launched an initiative to improve the efficiency of corporate insurance operations, engaging in a complex process to sell off two of the three and consolidate captive insurance activities with a single entity.

Wayne Cheng, director of corporate insurance, treasury, explains why the team undertook this project: "One of the values that is very ingrained within our company is optimizing operations so that we can best serve our patients. … Since we are an innovative company, we do not just accept business as usual."