The paper presents an approach to the operational risk management, and in particular to the risk measurement, based on the so-called key risk indicators (KRI). The development of the approach has been prompted by an unprecedented increase in the interest in the operational risk management issues at the end of the 20th century. The increased interest in the risk is linked to the spectacular failures of companies observed in the recent years, following the occurrence of operational risk, as well as to the faster changes in the applied technologies, globalisation and deregulation of financial markets, as well as to other factors. The aforementioned changes happened so rapidly and unexpectedly that relevant scientific methods supporting this area of business activity could not have been developed. Difficulties in finding relatively simple and reliable operational risk measurement methods for common application are also connected with the specific nature of operational risk, including lack of data on the frequency and the results of operational risk-related events, their short validity period, and very wide range of the operational risk factors.

The paper reveals the significance of the KRIs, describes the process of introduction and the scope of application thereof, and the role and position of the method among other known methods and approaches applied in the operational risk management. Both the selection of the key risk indicators and their number should be adequate to the specific character of an organization and the purpose of their application.

The theory of the scope and methods of KRI application in the process of operational risk management still remains open.