What Keeps Business Leaders Awake at Night?
Cyber, business interruption and natural catastrophes are the risks of most concern for businesses globally according to the Allianz Risk Barometer 2025 - as voted for by a record 3,778 risk management experts from 106 countries and territories.
Cyber incidents (38% of responses, a record 7% points ahead) consolidates its position as the most important risk.
The risk impact of new technologies and developments in artificial intelligence (AI) is a new entrant in the top 10 global risks at #10.
Closely interlinked to cyber, business interruption is ranked #2 (31%), just ahead of another related risk, natural catastrophes at #3 (29%).
Climate change is another standout result in 2025. It is the biggest mover in the top 10 risks globally, climbing two places to #5 (19%), achieving its highest ever position in the 14 years of the survey.
As climate- and nature-related risks continue to rise, the financial implications will become increasingly pronounced, whether it concerns managing climate change transition risk, mounting costs from regulatory compliance on disclosing physical climate risks or operational disruptions caused by more extreme weather events and ecosystem degradation.
Reflecting regulatory developments for sustainability and emerging technologies, changes in legislation and regulation (25%) also drew a bigger response this year, retaining #4 globally.
“What stands out in this year’s Allianz Risk Barometer is the interconnectivity of the top risks. A change in one – or indeed a mitigating action – might have a knock-on effect on another, and another. Climate change, emerging technology, regulation and geopolitical risks are increasingly intertwined, resulting in a complex network of cause and effect,” says Michael Bruch, Global Head of Risk Advisory Services, Allianz Commercial.
“Extreme weather events such as the devastating floods seen in Spain last year, increasing geopolitical conflicts, as well as cyber incidents like the CrowdStrike outage, demonstrate the need to continue building greater resilience. Resilience will be the key topic going forward.
“Humans often have short memories, quickly forgetting past events and maintaining unchanged behaviors. Despite some valuable lessons learned from the pandemic, which led many businesses to adopt resilience measures, I worry that current global events and the cost-of-living crisis might cause resilience to lose its priority. In truth, resilience is more crucial now than ever.”
