The AI-Powered Future of Decision-Making: A Risk Expert’s View
# AI
# Risk Management
How AI can improve risk assessment and decision-making, helping corporates move faster and smarter.
Rising premiums coupled with elevated rates of natural disasters are forcing corporates to make smarter, faster decisions around risks and coverage levels. But the avalanche of data that ERM and insurance teams must sift through to improve decision-making can also slow down the process.
In a new NeuGroup Insights video clip from an upcoming episode of the Strategic Finance Lab podcast, Brian Hagen, a seasoned corporate risk and insurance expert, offers a compelling vision for a future populated by so-called AI agents that aid senior leadership in high-stakes decisions, enhancing their ability to digest this data and act with confidence and speed.
Mr. Hagen, an adjunct professor of enterprise risk management at California State University, Fullerton, has spent decades refining how organizations quantify and navigate risk. His career spans leadership roles at Decision Empowerment Institute and Strategic Decisions Group, where he has helped businesses across industries—from biotech to energy—optimize strategic choices.
Framing the data. In the video, which you can watch by clicking the play button below, Mr. Hagen discusses one of his key concepts of decision-making: the “decision frame.” In an era of information overload, not all data is equally useful. A decision frame structures a problem, risk or opportunity, outlining what’s relevant and what’s not.
“We’re really inundated with information,” Mr. Hagen explains in the podcast. “I use the expression ‘decision relevant’—what actually matters to the decision at hand?”
Once a decision frame is established, organizations can determine the necessary inputs to assess risk and opportunity accurately. In the full conversation, he discusses how in insurance, for example, this means moving beyond generic coverage recommendations to evaluating policies based on an organization’s specific risk exposure.
Brian Hagen, enterprise risk expert
AI: decision partner, not replacement. Mr. Hagen envisions AI as an active participant in decision-making conversations, assisting rather than dictating. He says that AI chatbots or agents will help teams frame decisions, analyze past events and conduct real-time risk assessments. Instead of weeks-long analysis, critical decisions can be resolved in hours.
But crucially, AI won’t be making the final call. “That doesn’t mean the systems are making the decisions,” Mr. Hagen emphasizes. “It just means the decision process will keep getting better with these systems informing us.” AI will streamline scenario analysis and sensitivity testing, enabling decision-makers to focus on judgment, strategy, and leadership.
Looking ahead, in the podcast, you’ll hear Mr. Hagen discuss his decision-making philosophy, ways that informed decision-making have paid off, and his new venture: an AI-powered insurance analytics platform called GENAIDA.
