According to a recent survey by WTW, only half of key decision-makers and the teams supporting them are confident that their organization’s approach enables it to respond to today’s risk environment. Even more troubling, only 23% are confident their organization’s strategy will remain resilient to risks that emerge in the next decade. Respondents ranked technology, including artificial intelligence and cyberrisks, as their top emerging risk both today and “tomorrow” (a two-year horizon) and expected tech to be the greatest driver of change over the next 10 years.
Considering the current and near-term landscape, geopolitical concerns, including elections, social cohesion and misalignment between government and business interests, were a close second. On the 10-year timeline, respondents were more concerned about the amplification and acceleration of environmental risks, citing not only physical risk events like natural disasters, but climate change and climate transition risks, including environmental degradation and energy policy changes.
Among the wider employee base surveyed, 40% said they had never been asked to “feed into their organization’s emerging risks evaluation.” While almost all were able to identify the top changes they expect to see in the next two years and 10 years, only half of this group could specify the emerging risks of greatest concern to their organization. “This suggests there is opportunity to enhance internal intelligence processes through structured approaches,” WTW advised. “Action is needed to connect institutional pockets of risk intelligence and ensure a coordinated approach across the organization. Scenarios were seen as valuable ways (43%) for organizations to tell that story and determine the appropriate strategy.”