Accenture's 2009 Global Risk Management Study, based on a survey of 260 chief financial officers, chief risk officers and other executives with risk-management responsibilities at large companies in 21 countries, also found that 40 percent of respondents said that their companies already have increased or will increase their investments in broader risk-management capabilities in the next six months. Nearly another third (31 percent) of respondents said their companies are currently considering increasing their future investment in risk management capabilities.

Accenture's analysis also pointed to a lack of integration of current risk-management and performance-management processes. While nearly half the respondents said that their company's risk-management function is involved to a great extent in strategic planning (48 percent) or in investment and divestment decisions (45 percent), only 27 percent said the risk-management function was involved to a great extent in objective-setting and performance management.

"Executives could improve their organizations' performance and position themselves for economic recovery by linking and balancing risk management and performance management to aid their decision-making and increase shareholder returns," said Dan London, managing director of Accenture's Finance & Performance Management practice. "Being effective at this also requires companies to integrate their risk management capabilities enterprise-wide."

Survey respondents also identified a number of common problems with their risk-management functions, including:

Ineffective integration of risk, return and capital issues in decision-making (identified by 85 percent of respondents);

Lack of alignment between the company's strategies and its risk appetite (85 percent);

Insufficient enterprise-wide risk culture (82 percent);

Inadequate availability of timely risk, finance and business data (80 percent);

Lack of integration and aggregation across all risk types (78 percent); and

Ambiguous risk responsibilities between corporate and business units (78 percent).

Additionally, executives identified benefits they anticipate as a result of addressing their companies' risk-management shortcomings.