Are you prepared for these 'emerging risks'?

Many employers in New Zealand are not as prepared as they should be to deal with their current and emerging risks, according to the Marsh Survey of Risk.

The research asked Kiwi organisations to identify their biggest current and emerging business risks and then state whether or not they had a plan to address them.

The research found 23% of those surveyed said that they did not have a procedure in place to deal with cyber risk, 43% did not have plans in place to deal with increasing corporate governance requirements and 44% were similarly placed when it came to talent attraction and retention risks.

Marcus Pearson, country head, Marsh New Zealand, said understanding what the emerging risks are that will impact your business plays a big role in helping to manage them.

“Conducting a regular review of your risks and then putting a plan in place to help mitigate them, helps to secure the health of the organisation.”

The study also found 95% of the respondents stated that they did have processes and procedures in place to manage the biggest current risk “destruction and disruption of assets by fire, flood or some other natural disaster / extreme weather event”. Moreover, 45% of respondents did not have a plan in place to deal with business interruption due to supply chain failures.

“It was pleasing to see that organisations said that they were prepared to deal with natural disaster risk, especially given the increasing propensity of extreme weather events in New Zealand”, said Pearson.

“An area that is often forgotten about however is what you will do if your suppliers are hit. Many organisations focus on what happens if their location is

affected by an event but forget to consider what they would do their supply chain is impacted.”

The Marsh Survey of Risk also asked how entities manage their risks and whether they are reviewing risk more than they were two years ago.

The survey was completed by executives from 132 organisations across New Zealand – from SMEs to large corporates across a range of industries and organisational types.

The top risks, as identified in the survey include: