Our number one is... Supply Chain Risks! (But beware of Cyber Crime!)

Business interruption and supply chain risks are - by far - the most important risks for managers. Cyber risks on the other side made a significant jump into the top 10 business risks. That is the bottom line of the 'Allianz Risk Barometer - Top Business Risks 2015', published in January 2015 (see press release and downloadable files here: http://www.agcs.allianz.com/about-us/news/press-riskbarometer2015/). For the study, Allianz (Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, or in short: AGCS) asked more than 500 managers from 47 countries, with a focus on the corporate insurance sector for both large industrial and mid-sized companies. (The term mid-sized companies, however, is in some way misleading, since it does not match the categorization by the European Union. In the Allianz survey, mid-sized companies are defined by a revenue of not more than 250 million Euros.)

Figure 1: Top Business Risks 2015. Source: Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty: Allianz Risk Barometer 2015 Appendix, http://www.agcs.allianz.com/assets/PDFs/Reports/Allianz-Risk-Barometer-2015_Appendix.pdf.

As show in figure 1, almost half of the respondents mentioned business interruptions (BI) and supply chain (SC) risks as a top risk (46 % - after 43 % in 2014). More specifically, those risks are crucial for manufacturing companies; in this industry BI and SC risks had been mentioned by more than two third (68 % - after 60 % in 2014).

On one hand, this results are accompanied by an increasing awareness of such risks and their consequences for an enterprise's business. As Mark Mitchell, Regional CEO for Asia at AGCS puts it: "Companies now have a greater understanding of the need to monitor risk aggregations, not just geographically, but also in business interruption exposures." On the other hand, AGCS identified crucial discrepancies between the awareness and actual measures and systems to prevent companies from those risks. The study states: "[...] adequate [...] business continuity management remains a gap in many multinational companies' supply chain risk management programs." And: "Interdependencies between suppliers is often a big unknown. Many businesses still do not have alternate suppliers."

One of the big 'movers' (or should we say: one of the 'rising stars'?) are cyber risks. While two years ago, cyber risks were ranked 15th (with 6 % of the respondents mentioning this type of risk), the importance of cyber risks has grown steadily: In 2014, those risks were ranked 8th, listed by 12 % of the companies. In 2015, cyber risks were mentioned as a top risk by every 6th company (17 %), and were ranked 5th. Cyber risks are ranked 2nd in Germany (32 %), 3rd in the UK (30 %), and 3rd in the US (26 %). And: cyber risks are seen as no 1 risk for the next five years.

Figure 2: Top risks for which businesses are least prepared. Source: Allianz SE/Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE: Allianz Risk Barometer - Top Business Risks 2015, http://www.agcs.allianz.com/assets/PDFs/Reports/Allianz-Risk-Barometer-2015_EN.pdf

However, cyber risks are crucially underestimated. 73 % (that's almost 3 out of 4 companies!) of the companies say, the risk of cyber crime is underestimated. Even worse, more than half of the companies (54 %) has not even analyzed the problem! As a consequence, 29 % of the enterprises admit not to be sufficiently prepared for cyber risks, while for other risks this number is significantly smaller (see figure 2). The most feared cyber risk is data theft and manipulation (64 %), followed by loss of reputation (48 %) and increased threat of persistent hacking (44 %).

It is interesting that a shortage of skilled talents in combination with an aging workforce is not seen as a major risk. Exceptions from this observation: This risk seems to be relevant for Australia and the USA - in those two countries, talent shortage/aging workforce are ranked within the top 10 risks.

Figure 3: Top risks for the long-term future (5 to 10 years 'plus'). Source: Allianz SE/Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE: Allianz Risk Barometer - Top Business Risks 2015, http://www.agcs.allianz.com/assets/PDFs/Reports/Allianz-Risk-Barometer-2015_EN.pdf

In a long-term perspective, climate change is identified as the most concerning risk, directly followed by natural catastrophes (see figure 3). This is understandable, since at least the financial lossed resulting from natural catastrophes have increased dramatically over time.