In this episode of On Aon, Joe Peiser, CEO of Commercial Risk, and Richard Waterer, Global Risk Consulting Leader, unpack the major findings from Aon’s 2025 Global Risk Management Survey — and what Risk Management leaders can do to remain resilient in the face of increasingly systemic and interconnected risks.
They explore the critical role of analytics in understanding evolving threats and highlight three traits that distinguish highly resilient organizations: insight, agility and collaboration.
Key Takeaways:
Experts in this episode:
Key moments:
(1:12) The top 10 risks in our 2025 Global Risk Management Survey had some surprising and not-so-surprising results. Cyber Risk and Increasing Competition continue to rank highly, while Geopolitical Volatility made a significant jump.
(4:14) The risks cited are systemic and interconnected. Their impact is widespread and can be felt across the company.
(8:37) Highly resilient companies need three things to set themselves apart — insight, agility and collaboration.
Additional Resources:
Findings from Aon’s Global Risk Management Survey
5 Ways to Position Risk Capital as a Value Driver
AI and Workforce Skills: Who Should Act and Why Now?
5 Top Trends for Risk Capital in 2025
Soundbites:
Joe Peiser:
“Business leaders can't simply manage more risk by intuition. They really need the tools and the insights from those tools to interpret today's landscape and make decisions that help them survive and thrive.”
Richard Waterer:
“We were surprised to see Attracting and Retaining Top Talent fall out of this year's top 10. When you consider the challenges being brought about by workforces today, for example, healthcare costs in North America, new legislation on pay transparency in EMEA, you can understand why talent is a complex and costly issue for leaders.
Intro:
Hello and welcome to this episode of On Aon, where we dive into some of the most pressing risk capital and human capital issues businesses around the world are facing. Today we're looking at the results of the 2025 Aon Global Risk Management Survey, which examines the top risks that business leaders around the world are thinking about.
We're really pleased to have two great Aon Risk Capital experts in the studio to discuss the survey and what successful risk management looks like in this era of interconnected risk. So please welcome Joe Peiser, Aon's CEO of Commercial Risk, and Richard Waterer, who is Aon's Global Risk Consulting Leader.
Joe Peiser (00:00)
Hi, and welcome to the latest episode of On Aon. My name is Joe Peiser, and I'm Aon's CEO of Commercial Risk.
In this episode, we're taking a look at the Global Risk Management Survey findings for 2025. This is Aon's deep dive into the risks that concern business leaders around the world.
For this year's report, the 10th time we've carried out this research, we heard from nearly 3,000 decision makers, CEOs, CFOs, risk managers across 63 countries. And the results raise some really important issues for today's business leaders, especially around how we should prioritize, measure, and mitigate risk.
You can find out more about the survey on aon.com. But with me today to discuss the report's findings is Richard Waterer, who is the Global Risk Consulting Leader here at Aon. Great to have you with us today, Richard.
Richard Waterer (00:57)
Yeah, thanks Joe. It's great to be here.
Joe Peiser (00:59)
So let's dive into the survey findings. Every time we publish the survey, we list the top global risks. Richard, what were the big surprises in this year's current and future top 10?
Richard Waterer (01:12)
Thanks, Joe. So, first of all, Cyber Risk remains the top concern globally. I guess we weren't surprised by this. Earlier this year, Aon reported that the frequency of cyber incidents had increased by 22% year over year. This was being driven by ransomware events that were still the main driver of frequency. It's unsurprising, I guess, that this is top-of-mind for leaders.
What we're also seeing is the impact of technology as a disruptor and the risk of Increasing Competition has this year climbed from risk number 10 to risk number five. And if we think about the rapid adoption of AI and digital platforms and the introduction of new and disruptive competitors, I would say that this is almost certainly a large driver behind this heightened concern.
Now, one standout observation in our survey this year is Geopolitical Volatility. This has surged nearly 12 places in the ranks since the last survey in 2023 and is in the top 10 for the first time. And if you think about what's happened in the two years since the last Global Risk Management Survey, we've seen the Gaza crisis, the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine, the Red Sea shipping crisis, and the ongoing tensions in US and China relations, which of course have culminated more recently in the introduction of tariffs.
And all of this global uncertainty has also meant that Supply Chain Failure and Commodity Price Risk or Scarcity of Materials are also once again in the top 10 risks.
Now we were surprised to see Attracting and Retaining Top Talent fall out of this year's top 10. When you consider the challenges being brought about by workforces today, for example, healthcare costs in North America, new legislation on pay transparency in EMEA, you can understand why talent is a complex and costly issue for leaders.
But then you also overlay the ongoing and fast adoption of AI where many future job roles are expected to be markedly different and require new skills. And with all that in mind, I think this may be a risk that's been underestimated by some leaders in 2025.
Now I've mentioned Artificial Intelligence a couple of times already, but as a risk in its own right, we see it coming into focus for leaders. And in this year's survey, it's risen massively from number 50 in 2023 to 29 in this year's report, and perhaps even more tellingly to number eight in the future risks ranking.
And then finally, Climate Change and Natural Disasters have also reached their highest ever rankings in the survey at 16 and 13 respectively, and climate change has actually entered the top 10 future risks for the first time at number nine. It's clear that events such as the floods that we've seen in Spain, the wildfires in Brazil, they remain a constant reminder to leaders that these changing weather patterns pose a significant risk to both to asset resilience, but also to overall business resilience.
Joe Peiser (04:14)
Thanks, Richard. I find in my conversations with business leaders around the world that top of mind risks are very much the ones that you just mentioned.
And I wonder if, with artificial intelligence, I wonder if people are not yet cognizant of the impact it will have on workforce. So, I'm sure that's coming.
These top risks are systemic and they're interconnected, which means their impact can spread across an entire business. It doesn't just stay in one silo or even one subsidiary.
Technology risks interact with workforce, as we just pointed out, with artificial intelligence, the need for upskilling and adoption. Geopolitical instability affects supply chains, regulations and balance sheets. And climate risk affects nearly everything in a company.
So, Richard, what do business leaders need to think about when it comes to resilience to these new interconnected risks?
Richard Waterer (05:08)
Yeah, so if you think about how companies have assessed and managed risk in the past, they've considered each threat to their businesses largely independently from one another.
They've used historic data as a proxy for how the risk might develop in the future. And there's always been available capital in the market to help transfer the risk off their balance sheets.
Now, when you play back the risks that we were just discussing a moment ago, the top of mind for leaders today, and some of which carry a very different profile than they have in the past. And then you also take into account your commentary on the interconnected nature of these risks, it's clear that many of the traditional approaches are insufficient and some actually may even be outdated.
So practically, I'd be asking leaders a number of key questions.
I'd be asking them, do you have access to relevant data and insights? So we're seeing leading organizations using AI-driven models to simulate frequency and impact assessments of events with little or no traditional loss or claims data such as threats posed by AI misuse.
I'd ask them, are you using scenario planning to better understand the interconnectivity of your risk profile and the steps your company should be taking now to prepare?
I'd ask if they're investing sufficiently in horizon-scanning techniques and key risk indicators. So many of the risks that feature in our Global Risk Management Survey, if you think about geopolitical volatility, changes in regulation, legislation, increasing competition — these are issues that don't have a short-term quick fix, but they do need to be monitored. And we also need to understand at what point the trends we're monitoring start to represent a material risk to the company.
And I'd ask the leaders, are you exploring the full range of risk capital solutions that are available to offset these exposures? And do you have the right analytics to demonstrate what you need, both to your businesses, but also to the providers of risk capital?
Now, interestingly, Joe, what this year's survey appears to be telling us is that there is a gap between leaders' awareness and leaders' action in many organizations today. So only 14% of our survey respondents quantified their exposures to the top 10 risks, and only 19% use analytics to evaluate insurance program value.
So, it does feel as if there's a lot for leaders still to do to adjust in this new era.
Joe Peiser (07:34)
You know, that is a big gap, Richard.
And we know that business leaders can't simply manage more risk by intuition. They really need the tools and the insights from those tools to interpret today's landscape and make decisions that help them survive and thrive. And I want to go back to a point that you made about different risk mitigation actions that companies are taking and point out that scenario planning, often that's viewed as a soft action to take. But in fact, it's one of the most critical actions to take. And we've seen this over and over again from our clients who suffer catastrophes. Having done a scenario plan or a tabletop exercise, they can act so much more swiftly in the event of a crisis, because they know what decisions will need to be made and who needs to make those decisions. So, I hope our listeners think about scenario planning and tabletop exercises as part of their risk management plan.
So Richard, what do you think sets a highly resilient company apart from the pack?
Richard Waterer (08:37)
Yeah, so I'd probably summarize with three points: insight, agility, and collaboration.
So from an insight perspective, highly resilient companies, they tend to invest in analytics that will help to shape how they understand their developing risk profiles. So, these analytics drive insights and these insights in turn support the decisions that they make around risk mitigation, risk financing and crisis response.
As an example, we're seeing resilient companies using new and innovative analytics platforms to understand how risks in their supply chains are developing so that they can prepare and respond accordingly.
When I talk about agility, I'm talking about the ability of resilient companies to pivot and to flex as the profile or the velocity of their risks change. Those companies who are well practiced, exactly as you just said in your comments, in scenario planning or horizon scanning — so for example, in major geopolitical exposures such as conflicts or tariffs, those businesses that have thought those scenarios through and have practiced their response, they're likely to be more nimble in how they respond to events like that as they change.
And finally, when I talk about collaboration, I'm talking about the resilient company working across its divisions and regions to drive consensus. And that consensus is on both its appetite for its portfolio of risks, but also the strategies for managing and financing them.
Collaboration of course is also important when it comes to your advisors, your brokers and your markets. And the role of the risk leaders should be as a conduit between each of these important stakeholders, providing the guardrails that helps risk to influence and shape strategy and performance.
Joe Peiser (10:21)
No, thank you for that insight, Richard.
Resilient companies these days, we think they see risk as a function that can drive strategic value by optimizing the capital that they allocate to risk transfer.
So as they measure risk and they quantify the risk exposures that they have, what's the most efficient way to allocate capital against that risk? Sometimes it may be internal capital. Other times it may be accessing risk transfer capital that today comes not just from insurance companies, but also from reinsurance companies and from various players in the capital markets.
And here at Aon, we've created a Risk Capital structure, which enables us to access insurance capital, reinsurance capital, and increasingly capital market capital that has an interest in insurable risk.
So that's our show for today. Thank you all for listening. And thank you, Richard, for that great insight.
Don't forget that you can find out more about the Global Risk Management Survey, including insights by region and by industry, at aon.com/grms.
In the coming months, we'll have more episodes on risk capital topics, including a deeper dive into the renewal season and the risks involved in our increasing use of autonomous vehicles. Until next time, thank you.
Outro:
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