What Worries Corporate Executives? Covid, Covid and More Covid

(Bloomberg) -- Risks related to Covid-19 and the economic havoc it wreaked across the globe are keeping corporate executives up at night.

That’s the takeaway from an Aon Plc survey of 2,344 risk managers, chief risk officers and chief financial officers conducted in the second quarter. Cyber attacks were the No. 1 most-cited hazard, and more than half of the Top 10 risks executives say they face today are tied to the pandemic, according to survey results released Tuesday.

Many concerns are “innately interconnected, and they’re long-tail risks that are not single events,” said Lambros Lambrou, chief executive officer for commercial risk solutions at Aon. “One of the things Covid-19 demonstrated is that long-term risks are no longer a long way out on the horizon. They’re actually on many businesses’ doorsteps.”

Among the Covid-related concerns cited by respondents were cyber attacks; business interruption; an economic slowdown; commodities prices and materials scarcity; pandemic risks and health crises; and supply-chain or distribution failure. Cyber risk has deepened during Covid, Aon found, as more people work remotely, “presenting more potential security vulnerabilities to bad actors.”

The insurance broker also identified issues that businesses appear to be taking too lightly. Among them are environmental, social and governance; climate change; personal liability linked to directors and officers; and disruptive technologies.

One caveat is that the risks companies face are evolving quickly and are diverse, demanding that the insurance industry change to fight them off, Lambrou said.

“Emerging risk and future risk is moving faster than the insurance industry is able to keep up with right now,” he said. “As an industry, we need to come together and innovate more effectively.”

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