Revealed – high D&O dangers

Financial and cyber dangers, particularly these related to ransomware and knowledge loss, are a matter of accelerating concern to administrators and officers, in accordance with a brand new survey from WTW and world legislation agency Clyde & Co.

The survey recognized key dangers for administrators in North America, Latin America, the UK, Europe, Asia and Australasia, gathering responses from 40 international locations.

Financial threat was thought of the most important threat for companies by 63% of administrators, adopted by cyber threat at 62%, in accordance with the survey. Geopolitical threat rose to fourth place from sixth place final 12 months.

General, the outcomes of this 12 months’s survey are in line with these mirrored within the 2022 survey, with cyber, knowledge loss and knowledge extortion persevering with to be among the many high considerations for administrators, WTW stated.

For the primary time, the survey break up financial dangers into three perils: inflation, recession and the job market. Most world administrators cited inflation as the most important financial threat at 69%, carefully adopted by recession at 67%.

Different key findings included:

• COVID-19 and Brexit dangers nonetheless ranked within the high 5, however proceed to lower in significance
• Local weather change has hit the highest 5 dangers for administrators in Nice Britain, the place it’s thought of the number-one threat, and Australasia, the place it ranked fourth
• Geopolitical threat ranked extremely for companies in Europe, Asia and Latin America

“With a unstable enterprise setting ensuing from the present geopolitical uncertainty, it’s no shock that geopolitical threat is rising on the record of administrators’ considerations,” stated Jeremy Wall, head of worldwide monetary and govt (FINEX) dangers at WTW. “The arrival of expertise ensures that cyber will proceed to be of main concern and we’re actually seeing extra demand for cyber insurance coverage consequently. We’re delighted to launch this report as we all know it’s being sourced as an important useful resource to help administrators and threat managers when refining their threat administration methods.”

“Cyber dangers stay the first concern for administrators within the Australasia area, an unsurprising perspective that’s little doubt pushed by final 12 months’s main knowledge breaches together with Optus, Medibank and MyDeal,” stated Jill Stewart, Australasian head of FINEX at WTW.

“With firms and their leaders working in an virtually unprecedented local weather of uncertainty, this 12 months’s survey supplies well timed and worthwhile insights into the evolving threat panorama,” stated James Cooper, head of insurance coverage at Clyde & Co. “We requested administrators about 28 dangers, and general, the outcomes are very in line with final 12 months, with cyber dangers rating considerably above different dangers. There have been developments, nevertheless, with notable new dangers together with programs and controls, enough cyber experience at board degree and worker crime and cyber crime as a subset of crime dangers.”

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