Top-flight risk managers are not one-trick ponies. Historically, they have confined themselves to property and casualty risks. They did not touch areas like accident and health benefits, life insurance, sort and long-term disability, or employee assistance programs.

That may be changing, though. The current trend is to bring risk managers into the realm of employee benefits, as well. An increasing number of observers believe that risk managers can add substantive value to the employee benefit side of the house. Let's look at some ways that risk managers can leverage their skills to improve a company's administration of employee benefits.

Many believe that the risk management department is better suited to handling funding issues. For this reason, Lyle Walker, president of Walker Risk Management in Allen Park, Mich., believes that much common ground exists between human resources and risk management. The method of determining optimum funding mechanisms does not change from those handled by risk management to those handled by human resources. Risk management probably is best equipped to handle funding decisions, he argues.