Ignoring travel safety policy costs lives and damages business warns The Anvil Group

In the aftermath of the fatal air crash last weekend that caused the death of the entire board of an Australian mining company, a UK based firm of security consultants is urging corporations to revisit their travel policies, and more importantly check the processes employed to ensure they are being adhered to.

All eleven passengers and crew on the flight lost their lives, and at the time of writing, trading in shares of the publicly listed company, Sundance Resources, had been suspended on the Australian Stock Exchange, with analysts suggesting a significant markdown in its value given the uncertain outlook. Early news reports suggest the company’s travel policy stipulated that no more than two members of the board should travel on the same flight together, but for unknown reasons this rule was overridden. In addition, there are questions over the safety record of the airline that was chosen to operate the flight, Aero-Service based in Republic of Congo. Best practice Corporate Governance requires publicly listed companies to identify key risks within the business and explain how those risks will be managed. In Australia this is supervised by the Australian Securities Exchange, in the United Kingdom by the Financial Reporting Council and in the USA under The Sarbanes-Oxley Act. “An incident of this magnitude should prompt organizations to review their risk management policies and ensure that measures to enforce compliance are reliable,” commented Matthew Judge of travel risk management specialists, The Anvil Group. “Travel monitoring systems like The Anvil Group’s ETMS are designed to automatically alert heads of security or travel managers to high risk activity, such as the booking of too many executives on the same flight or when the selected airline has a low safety score or even appears on a blacklist. Mercifully, tragic accidents such as this one are rare. Nevertheless, the event reinforces the importance of a robust and well regulated policy,” he explained further.