Integrated Risk Management (IRM) is repeatedly underfunded for a structural reason: leaders keep forcing IRM into an ROI construct that demands a single, auditable chain of causality, while IRM is designed to distribute value across multiple domains at once. In this episode, Ori Wellington and Sam Jones explain why ROI framing collapses into assumption-stacked narrative under CFO scrutiny, and why risk leaders need a finance-compatible alternative that remains decision-grade.

The episode’s answer is a disciplined shift: evaluate IRM with cost/benefit analysis, and label the benefit streams as dividends. Dividends are distributed outcomes that improve enterprise performance and resilience without requiring false precision in a single attributable cash-flow line.

Source: RTJ Bridge (Wheelhouse Advisors Premium Research)

What executives should take from this episode

• ROI is the wrong container for IRM. ROI demands strict attribution. IRM delivers system-level uplift where attribution is inherently weak.
• Use dividends to quantify value in decision-grade terms:
  • Efficiency dividend (cycle time and throughput improvements), with explicit discipline on what becomes realized value.
  • Loss mitigation dividend (reduction in expected loss), modeled through scenarios, frequency, severity, and control effectiveness assumptions.
  • Trust dividend (friction removed), increasingly the gating factor for velocity in an AI-era operating model.
• Avoid the credibility traps embedded in legacy GRC value calculators. They pull the conversation toward compliance throughput, invite silo double counting, and emphasize backward-looking activity counts rather than continuous assurance.

If IRM is positioned as a strategic capability, its value model must be positioned the same way. Build a dividend-based business case that finance can challenge and still accept, then use it to protect and accelerate the enterprise’s highest-leverage investments.

Podcast Episode Chapters

0:00 The ROI Mismatch Problem
3:58 Defining Finance-Grade ROI Rigor
7:03 Why IRM Defies Singular Attribution
12:03 Introducing The Dividends Model
15:48 Efficiency Dividend And Its Limits
21:48 Capacity Redeployment Vs Trapped Time
25:58 Quantifying Loss Mitigation Credibly
31:48 Presenting Ranges And Confidence
36:03 The Trust Dividend As Friction Removed

Wheelhouse Advisors’ YouTube channel delivers fast, executive-ready insights on Integrated Risk Management. Explore short explainers, IRM Navigator research highlights, RiskTech Journal analysis, and conversations from The Risk Wheelhouse Podcast. We cover the issues that matter most to modern risk leaders. Every video is designed to sharpen decision making and strengthen resilience in a digital-first world. Subscribe at youtube.com/@wheelhouseadv.

Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform—whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music.

Please contact us directly at info@wheelhouseadvisors.com or feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn and X.com.

Visit www.therisktechjournal.com and www.rtj-bridge.com to learn more about the topics discussed in today's episode.

Season 6 opens with a clear message for Technology Risk Management leaders: autonomy is no longer constrained by model capability, it is constrained by infrastructure discipline and auditable management controls.

In S6E1, Ori Wellington and Sam Jones translate NVIDIA’s CES 2026 signals into a practical blueprint for Autonomous IRM, defined as continuous, AI-enabled verification and response loops that operate within explicit policy boundaries and generate audit-grade evidence by design. As inference costs fall, “always-on” control validation becomes economically viable at enterprise scale. That shift forces a new operating model: humans stop chasing evidence and start adjudicating pre-enriched exceptions with decision provenance, context, and rollback paths already assembled.

The episode also surfaces the non-negotiables executives must plan for now:

• Agent runtime as infrastructure: a durable, logged, testable, reversible execution layer
• Agent control plane: standardized identity, permissions, tool access, evaluation, logging, and rollback to prevent agent sprawl
• Hybrid autonomy: centralized policy with localized execution for latency, sovereignty, and resilience
• Long-context assurance: end-to-end traceability that raises retention, privacy, and legal-hold stakes
• Simulation-based validation: replayable resilience testing and scenario libraries that become first-class assurance artifacts

The call to action is explicit: treat inference economics as a design variable, standardize management controls before scaling, and operationalize simulation as assurance.

Wheelhouse Advisors’ YouTube channel delivers fast, executive-ready insights on Integrated Risk Management. Explore short explainers, IRM Navigator research highlights, RiskTech Journal analysis, and conversations from The Risk Wheelhouse Podcast. We cover the issues that matter most to modern risk leaders. Every video is designed to sharpen decision making and strengthen resilience in a digital-first world. Subscribe at youtube.com/@wheelhouseadv.

Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform—whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music.

Please contact us directly at info@wheelhouseadvisors.com or feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn and X.com.

Visit www.therisktechjournal.com and www.rtj-bridge.com to learn more about the topics discussed in today's episode.

ServiceNow’s planned $7.75B all-cash acquisition of Armis (targeted to close in H2 2026) is easy to misfile as “just another cybersecurity deal.” In this episode, Wheelhouse Advisors’ Ori Wellington and Sam Jones explain why it is actually a defining IRM market signal, one that raises the standard for what “risk management at scale” should mean going into 2026 procurement cycles.

The core message is simple and disruptive: IRM is shifting from artifact completion to verified outcomes. Risk registers, control libraries, assessments, and attestations may prove process, but they do not prove exposure was reduced. The deal signals a move toward a unified operating model where real-time asset and exposure intelligence, prioritization logic, and remediation plus verification workflows increasingly sit on a single platform spine.

Ori and Sam break down the new credibility threshold for “continuous monitoring” using a practical three-layer test:

• Visibility: continuous discovery, classification, and exposure scoring across IT, OT, IoT, and medical devices
• Action: prioritized routing into owned remediation workflows with clear accountability and SLAs
• Verification: audit-grade proof remediation occurred and residual exposure is measured and trending down, not just tickets being closed

They also connect this shift to the next wave of agent-assisted operations, with a clear warning: automation without validation can scale noise faster than it scales risk reduction. The episode defines the audit-grade evidence trail IRM leaders should demand, including signal provenance, decision logic, action records, and verification that a fix held over time.

Finally, Ori and Sam outline three immediate actions IRM leaders should take now for 2026 planning: rewrite outcome metrics, require closed-loop proofs of value, and explicitly test openness to avoid proprietary data-model lock-in as platform consolidation accelerates.

This episode draws from Wheelhouse’s IRM50 OnWatch research note and the IRM50 Vendor Index, and references Wheelhouse’s recently published ERM Vendor Compass Report, where ServiceNow is profiled.

Listen now to recalibrate your evaluation standards before 2026 technology plans get locked.

Access the full IRM50 OnWatch note and more IRM50 research by subscribing at rtj-bridge.com.

Wheelhouse Advisors’ YouTube channel delivers fast, executive-ready insights on Integrated Risk Management. Explore short explainers, IRM Navigator research highlights, RiskTech Journal analysis, and conversations from The Risk Wheelhouse Podcast. We cover the issues that matter most to modern risk leaders. Every video is designed to sharpen decision making and strengthen resilience in a digital-first world. Subscribe at youtube.com/@wheelhouseadv.

Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform—whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music.

Please contact us directly at info@wheelhouseadvisors.com or feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn and X.com.

Visit www.therisktechjournal.com and www.rtj-bridge.com to learn more about the topics discussed in today's episode.