ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND ITS IMPACT ON FIRM PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM SRI LANKAN INSURANCE INDUSTRY

Enterprise risk management (ERM) has gained an increased attention among the corporate managers in the recent past as a strategic approach to managing risk. This study empirically verifies whether the adoption of ERM has an impact on firm performance and uses both primary and the secondary data relating to the insurance companies listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange. Return on equity (ROE) is used as a proxy to measure the firm performance and multivariate regression analysis is used to analyze data. The findings of this study suggest that there is a weak positive relationship between the adoption of ERM practice and the return on equity. Out of the eight ERM functions assessed, only ‘event identification' and ‘control activities' show a weak positive relationship with ROE. Other ERM functions indicate that there is a weak negative relationship with ROE. The findings of this study contradict with some scholars who find there is a significant positive relationship between adoption of ERM and firm performance. Owing to the contradictory nature of the findings, this study induces corporate managers to pay a close attention to the cost-benefits analysis when designing and implementing ERM system and not to heavily invest and extensively relied upon ERM as a vehicle for creating long-term shareholder value.