The risk transformation challenge: Building strategic advantage and resilience
A look into risk management practices across Nordic organisations
Nordic organisations face an unprecedented convergence of challenges: rapid technological disruption, geopolitical volatility, escalating operational costs, and increasingly intricate supply chains. This dynamic environment demands that leadership teams take a fundamental look at the risk management domain, which often needs to evolve from a defensive discipline focused on threat mitigation to a strategic enabler that transforms uncertainty into competitive advantage, empowering organisations to accelerate innovation and capitalise on emerging opportunities.
Our survey on risk management and resilience practices covers 52 organisations in the Nordics (excluding the financial services and public sectors) and examines both current risk practices and priorities as well as risk practitioners’ views on building insights, competence and robustness for the future.
Risk governance and culture – Despite risk cultures improving over the last three years, risk practitioners are concerned that there exists inadequate ownership of risks within their organisations, often coupled with insufficient understanding and engagement from executive and board stakeholders.
Strategic partnering – Risk functions across the Nordics have a clear vision of becoming a strategic partner to the business, however, organisations’ display a near-exclusive focus on threat mitigation.
Skills and perceptions – Risk practitioners recognise the need to develop capabilities to leverage artificial intelligence, enterprise level analytics and risk modelling to be prepared to tackle the evolving risk landscape, as well as increased organisational awareness of the value-add components of effective risk management.
Risk outlook – Strategic risk is consistently perceived to be at the forefront of boards minds, followed by a focus on financial risks to ensure sound and profitable operations. Our survey show that risk practitioners expect geopolitical risks to rise in prominence across all organisations in the next three years, with cybersecurity and digital risks remaining top concerns in the future.
Building resilience – Nordic organisations inhabit a cyber-centric view of resilience, with few resilience programs focussing on the holistic threat landscape spanning beyond cyber-risks.
Technology – Organisations cite limited progress on building use cases for advanced analytics and GenAI deployment within the risk function and broader business processes.
We hope the findings and perspectives presented in our report provide useful guidance for risk practitioners, business leaders, and boards seeking to enhance their organisation’s resilience and strategic agility in a fast-changing environment.
