Risk and Clarity with Huw Edwards, RIMS Texas Keynote

Welcome to RIMScast. Your host is Justin Smulison, Business Content Manager at RIMS, the Risk and Insurance Management Society.   Justin interviews Huw Edwards, an entrepreneur, investor, and international speaker. Huw will kick off the RIMS Texas Regional Conference 2025 with his keynote speech. Huw covers the varied topics of leveraging his quantitative training in risk roles, his cybersecurity experience in the companies he helped develop, and even his extensive ultramarathon experience. Huw explores what entering the “pain cave” as an ultramarathon runner has taught him about life and risk management.   Huw believes that being AI-first will be a key factor in whether risk professionals will be promoted. He shares a preview of his keynote and his advice to risk professionals. Listen to learn about the role of quantitative analysis in entrepreneurship and risk management, and how risk management is evolving with AI tools.   Key Takeaways: [:01] About RIMS and RIMScast. [:17] About this episode of RIMScast. Our guest today is Huw Edwards, who will kick off the RIMS Regional Texas Conference 2025, which will be from August 4th through the 6th in San Antonio. [:44] Huw is a three-time business owner and an executive coach. We’ll get a glimpse of his keynote today. [:51] RIMS-CRMP Workshops! The next Virtual RIMS-CRMP exam prep, co-hosted by Parima, will be held on September 2nd and 3rd. [1:02] The next RIMS-CRMP-FED virtual workshop will be led by Joseph Mayo on July 17th and 18th. Register by July 16th. Links to these courses can be found on the Certification Page of RIMS.org and through this episode’s show notes. [1:20] RIMS Virtual Workshops! We have a day-long course on July 24th, “Risk Taxonomy for Effective Risk Management.” On August 5th, we have a day-long course about “Emerging Risks.” [1:32] We’ve launched a new course, “Intro to ERM for Senior Leaders.” This is a two-day course. The first two-day course will be held on August 12th and 13th and will be led by former RIMS President, Chris Mandel. [1:47] The course will be held again on November 4th and 5th and will be led by Elise Farnham. RIMS members enjoy deep discounts! [1:56] The full schedule of virtual workshops can be found on the RIMS.org/education and RIMS.org/education/online-learning pages. A link is also in this episode’s notes. [2:07] If you tuned in to the recent episode featuring James Lam, you will know he is hosting a new six-module workshop for us, the “RIMS-CRO Certificate in Advanced Enterprise Risk Management”. [2:21] The inaugural summer course is completely sold out! We are filled to the virtual capacity! Don’t worry, in the Fall, the bi-weekly course will begin on October 9th. Registration closes on October 2nd. A link is in this episode’s notes. Check it out and register today! [2:40] Mark your calendars for November 17th and 18th for the RIMS ERM Conference 2025 in Seattle, Washington. The agenda is being built. Soon, we will distribute a Call for Nominations for the ERM Award of Distinction. I’ll update this episode’s show notes when that link is ready. [3:04] Think about your organization’s ERM program or one you know of, and how it has generated value. We will have more on that in the coming weeks. [3:12] RISKWORLD 2026 will be in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 3rd through May 6th. RIMS members can now lock in the 2025 rate for a full conference pass to RISKWORLD 2026 when registering by September 30th. [3:26] This also lets you enjoy earlier access to the RISKWORLD hotel block. Register by September 30th, and you will also be entered to win a $500 raffle. Don’t miss out on this chance to plan and score some extra perks. [3:39] The members-only registration link is in this episode’s show notes. If you are not yet a member, this is the time to register at RIMS.org/membership. [3:49] On with the show! Our guest today is a Harvard- and Oxford-educated entrepreneur, investor, and international speaker. [3:57] On Tuesday, August 5th, he’ll kick off the Inaugural RIMS Texas Regional Conference with his keynote, “Your Insurance Policy for Success: Eight Mental Toughness Lessons I’ve Learned from Running 100 Miles Through the Mountains.” [4:10] His name is Huw Edwards. He is the founder of multiple ventures, including Jungle Disk and CyberFortress. We’re going to get a preview of his keynote and learn about his risk philosophies and risk journey. [4:21] Interview! Huw Edwards, welcome to RIMScast! [4:36] Huw is excited to be on RIMScast and to be opening the RIMS Texas Regional Conference in August. Justin loves going to Texas and is looking forward to the conference. [5:01] Huw comes from Wales. His accent comes from living in about 16 parts of the U.S. [5:55] Growing up, Huw was good with numbers. After college, being a mathematician, he landed a job with Goldman Sachs in a derivatives group. He helped big corporations manage their financial risks. [6:54] Huw tells about buying his first business. When he sold it, he didn’t have the attachment of having founded it. He took it on a journey and then sold it to a private equity firm that joined it with several other companies to create a much bigger platform. [7:52] Huw is a “reluctant entrepreneur.” He was not a teenage businessman. He was good at school and at doing work. The first business he bought was a profitable going concern with existing customers. It was a business unit in a big company, stuck in a corner. [8:39] Huw saw it had wonderful economics and just had to be invested in. It had sticky customers. It was very profitable. It needed some love, care, and attention. That was Huw’s easy transition into entrepreneurship. He bought the business in 2016. [9:00] In 2017, customers started asking where they could buy Bitcoin. Customers were asking about Bitcoin because they were victims of a ransomware attack that demanded Bitcoins to unlock their computers. Huw’s company had backups of its clients’ data. [10:00] This circumstance pulled the company into the world of cyber insurance. It was a new field. Huw’s company served small businesses and helped them protect their data. Managing their clients’ data, they realized they could do the job better. [10:53] Huw says two things connect him to the RIMS Texas Regional Conference. The Insurance Company, USAA, is in San Antonio. Another insurance company, Argo, was there for a time. In 2018, RISKWORLD was held in San Antonio. [11:30] In 2018, Huw and partners incubated an MGA within a large company. They showed up at RISKWORLD to do customer testing and exploration. Coming back to a RIMS conference as a keynote speaker is a full-circle journey for Huw. [12:11] Huw’s company was CyberFortress. It was spun out from Jungle Disk, a larger company. Huw raised a bunch of VC money and swung for the fences, but didn’t find a product market fit there. They had built a solution, looking for a problem. It was a character-building experience. [13:06] It gave Huw some great insight, working with the insurance company. They launched their insurance policy in Texas, backed by Markel. The challenge was that it wasn’t well-positioned, and people didn’t buy it. [13:29] Huw believes the greatest opportunity for risk managers in today’s cybersecurity landscape is to understand that the big factor is human behavior. You can buy systems, but it comes down to the people running those systems. [13:52] The successful cyber insurance offerings and cybersecurity firms largely help, train, monitor, and guide behavior to avoid clients doing the dumb stuff. Don’t click on dumb stuff. [14:14] Risk managers are now interested in AI. AI is just another very powerful tool that can give you a lot of leverage. You can’t outsource responsibility to AI, but it can do a lot of things. You can leverage those things. [15:01] Companies are looking for employees who are AI-first. Your comfort with AI will be a deciding factor that separates the people who are promoted or kept on.  [16:12] Huw thinks risk managers get a bad rap. Huw worked for Bridgewater. When he took the job, he was given a lot of books on managing risk. He learned you’re not trying to eliminate risk but trying to manage it. How do you take advantage of risk? How do you scale risk exposure? [16:59] How do you mitigate the catastrophic risk or existential risk that could kill, but be open to riding the waves of the lesser risks that could give great upsides? [17:18] Risk managers can be seen as Negative Nancy, saying no. But risk management can enable. [17:47] Huw will talk about his long-distance running. He is also a big Formula 1 fan. Formula 1 cars can go really fast. What makes the Formula 1 car go fast around the track is good brakes. Like brakes in a car, risk management can make something go faster, braking when needed. [18:55] Plugs with Roma Rishi, Sr. Sales Executive, Origami Risk! Origami Risk is excited to be a sponsor at the RIMS Texas Regional Conference. Origami Risk will have a booth there to demonstrate their products. They will also speak at one of the sessions. [19:35] They will be talking with Roy Hock, the Director of Excess Insurance at Valero Energy, about leveraging technology to manage your captive. See Origami at its table, at its session, or both! [19:48] Origami Risk will be at the RIMS Texas Regional Conference from August 4th through August 6th. Origami Risk will also be at the tenth Chicagoland Risk Forum, on September 18th at the Old Post Office in Chicago. [20:02] Origami Risk will have a booth there, and Roma’s colleague, Gina Rothweiler, is going to be speaking. Come find Origami Risk at the Chicagoland Risk Forum! [20:10] Registration is complimentary for members of risk management departments in the nearby area. A link to the registration page is in this episode’s show notes. You can visit ChicagoRIMS.org as well. [20:33] On October 1st through the 3rd, Origami Risk will be in the Bay Area, California, for the RIMS Western Regional Conference. They will have a booth and will speak at a session with the Risk Manager of Sprouts about leveraging data and technology for productive risk management. [21:02] Origami Risk will be at RIMS ERM, on November 17th and 18th in Seattle, Washington. That agenda is being built. Origami Risk will have a kiosk and hope to speak, too. [21:22] Origami Risk will have a presence at the 2025 Florida RIMS Educational Conference from July 29th through August 2nd. Connect with Roma’s colleague Alex and Origami Risk there. [21:37] Roma, it’s always great to see you and the Origami Risk team. [21:45] Connect with Roma and Origami Risk online at LinkedIn and OrigamiRisk.com, in the Contact Us area. [21:52] Let’s Return to the Conclusion of My Interview with RIMS Texas Keynote Speaker Huw Edwards! [22:01] On Tuesday, August 5th, at 9:00 a.m., Huw Edwards will kick off the RIMS Texas Regional with his keynote address. He will talk about personal experiences, which include several ultramarathons.  [22:54] For Huw, it was the challenge and the uncertainty that drew him to ultramarathons. When you line up on the start line of a marathon, you might not know how well you’ll do that day, but by and large, you know you’ll finish. [23:40] Huw found himself drawn to these 100-mile races, in the mountains, going up and down, on trails, at altitude. It’s an eating and hydration competition, and getting your electrolytes right. It’s about managing the heat of the day and the cold of the night. [24:18] It’s about your stomach going South, or rolling an ankle. You can have a belief on the start line that you will finish, but you don’t know what’s going to happen that day. It’s a somewhat controlled, uncontrollable environment. It’s less complex than risk management. [25:01] In risk management, you have hundreds of thousands or millions of human players and economic actors interacting. When you’re running, you have yourself, knowing how hard you can push, but you don’t know what the weather will bring. It’s a microcosm of the game of life. [25:39] The lessons are huge. We somehow think we can control everything in life, or we try. In running this kind of distance, things just go wrong. You can’t control everything, so how do you learn how to respond? That’s what keeps Huw coming back to ultramarathons. [26:07] Justin sees the parallels with risk management; you’re striving for greatness, but sometimes you have to settle for goodness. [26:27] You don’t go all in from the start. You have to pace yourself. The races have a time cutoff. If you are too conservative, you won’t get there. In risk management, if you try to mitigate all risk, you’ll have to pay through the nose for insurance. It’s a judgment call. [27:28] In ultramarathons, you navigate emotional highs and lows. No matter how you’re feeling, good or bad, it won’t last. When you’re running great, enjoy it; it’s not going to last. When you feel terrible, that will pass, too. [27:53] That’s a glimpse of part of the keynote. Justin says it’s great that Huw has risk experience and has been to RISKWORLD. [28:18] Huw has a theme, smiling on the outside, suffering on the inside. For a long time, he tried to put a brave face on things. It’s OK to suffer at times, acknowledge it, and not paper over the cracks of your feelings. It’s OK to be authentic. Huw will touch on that in the keynote. [28:54] Sometimes you learn a lot in those moments of suffering. Huw will talk about the pain cave. At some point in an ultramarathon, you enter the pain cave. This term was made famous by one of the greatest ultra runners, Courtney Dauwalter. [29:28] When Courtney Dauwalter talks about the pain cave, she says she used to try to push it off and delay the inevitable moment of going into the pain cave. But the whole point is to experience that edge. [29:48] So you welcome the pain cave. It was meant to hurt. What can we learn about it? [30:06] Huw will take questions at the end of his keynote. Everyone can go to the link in this episode’s show notes for the registration page for the RIMS Texas Regional Conference. [30:18] Huw, it was such a pleasure to meet you! I can’t wait to see you live on stage on August 5th. [30:29] Special thanks again to Huw Edwards for joining us here on RIMScast! He will be kicking off the RIMS Texas Regional Conference 2025. That’s the Risk Management Roundup in San Antonio, Texas, from August 4th through August 6th. Huw will be there on August 5th. [30:48] Visit the Events page on RIMS.org and the link in this episode’s show notes to register. [30:53] RIMS has negotiated a discounted rate at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio River Walk. The cutoff date for reservations is July 11th. So, register now and make those reservations! [31:06] Plug Time! You can sponsor a RIMScast episode for this, our weekly show, or a dedicated episode. Links to sponsored episodes are in the show notes. [31:34] RIMScast has a global audience of risk and insurance professionals, legal professionals, students, business leaders, C-Suite executives, and more. Let’s collaborate and help you reach them! Contact pd@rims.org for more information. [31:52] Become a RIMS member and get access to the tools, thought leadership, and network you need to succeed. Visit RIMS.org/membership or email membershipdept@RIMS.org for more information. [32:10] Risk Knowledge is the RIMS searchable content library that provides relevant information for today’s risk professionals. Materials include RIMS executive reports, survey findings, contributed articles, industry research, benchmarking data, and more. [32:26] For the best reporting on the profession of risk management, read Risk Management Magazine at RMMagazine.com. It is written and published by the best minds in risk management. [32:40] Justin Smulison is the Business Content Manager at RIMS. You can email Justin at Content@RIMS.org. [32:48] Thank you all for your continued support and engagement on social media channels! We appreciate all your kind words. Listen every week! Stay safe!   Links: RIMS Hurricane/Storm Risk Management Resource Center  RIMS Texas Regional 2025 — August 3‒5 | Registration open. 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RIMS Virtual Workshops On-Demand Webinars RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) RISK PAC | RIMS Advocacy RIMS Strategic & Enterprise Risk Center RIMS-CRMP Stories — Featuring RIMS President Kristen Peed!   RIMS Events, Education, and Services: RIMS Risk Maturity Model®   Sponsor RIMScast: Contact sales@rims.org or pd@rims.org for more information.   Want to Learn More? Keep up with the podcast on RIMS.org, and listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.   Have a question or suggestion? Email: Content@rims.org.   Join the Conversation! Follow @RIMSorg on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.   About our guests: Huw Edwards, Entrepreneur, investor, and international speaker Roma Rishi, Sr. Sales Executive, Origami Risk   Production and engineering provided by Podfly.