An unsurprising insight from AON’s bi-annual 2019  Global Risk Management Survey of investors and companies worldwide was that “organizations need to be more prepared for the broad range of risks that threaten their ability to continue growing, protecting their brand and serving clients and stakeholders.” 

Top 15 risks

The 15 top risks, which are interlinked, are most concerning for participants in Aon's 2019 Global Risk Management Survey are:

Source & Copyright©2019 - AON Group

The risks which became much more important in the last two years were:

• Accelerated rates of change in market factors
• Business interruption

And surprisingly regulatory change and cybersecurity risks became less important over the last two years.

Regions view risks differently - today and 3-year projection

The interactive presentation of the results per region for today and 3-year projection - see - showed that:

• 3-year projection:
  • APAC: Economic Slowdown / Slow Recovery
  • Europe: Accelerated Rates of Change in Market Factors
  • Latam: Accelerated Rates of Change in Market Factors
  • Middle East & Africa: Economic Slowdown / Slow Recovery
  • North America: Cyber Attacks / Data Breach
• Basically, the respondents saw little change in the risk concerns over next three years.

The problems: falling risk readiness and climate change unimportant

Risk managers are reporting their lowest level of risk readiness in 12 years, as many of the top risks, such as economic slowdown and increasing competition are uninsurable. As a result, risk managers need to embrace risk management as opposed to risk transfer in order to mitigate these threats and protect their organizations from potential volatility.

“The changes in this year’s survey results indicate that the risk management function must evolve to reach the enterprise level,” AON spokesman. “This, combined with the use of data and predictive analytics that can generate actionable insights, will help businesses protect their bottom lines while adapting to accelerated change and economic fluctuations.”

Climate change moved from a ranking of 45 in 2017 to 31 in 2019, as the frequency and severity of natural catastrophes contribute to rising concerns about the impact on the global economy.

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CTMfile take: The alarming, scary feature of this survey is that companies worldwide ranked climate change risk as the 31st risk, yet it is the most important risk facing the world today.