Climate risks, disruptive technology and geopolitical instability are the top emerging risks according to an annual survey of risk managers. The new survey has been jointly published by the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries.
The 18th annual edition of emerging risk survey is based on an online assessment conducted in November 2024 and includes 201 participants, primarily risk managers from North America, Bermuda, the Caribbean, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The survey uses four categories to measure risks as perceived by risk managers: top current risk, the leading five emerging risks, overall emerging risk and emerging risk combinations.
Climate change has dominated the top of the emerging risk lists since 2021 but in 2024 it shared the top spot with geopolitical instability — including civil wars. Concerns about the impact of AI have driven the upward trend of disruptive technology as an emerging risk. Cyber security and manipulation are particular hazards chosen by survey respondents.
Also, survey respondents have cited the risk of failed and failing states increasingly less often since the 2010s, and trend changed in 2023, steeply increasing since then. On the other hand, the selection of asset price collapse risk and financial volatility as current or emerging risks have reached new lows in the latest survey findings.
The top emerging risks chosen by risk managers in the survey reflect recent events. These include the continuing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, hurricanes Milton and Helene, the downward trend of inflation and interest rates.
Survey authors actuary David Schraub and financial consultant Max Rudolph said the survey “compiles trends about risks that extend longer than the time horizon used for standard industry planning cycles.
“This analysis provides helpful ways to understand how actuaries and risk managers disconnect from day-to-day operations and take a long-term view of risk and to see how these views have evolved over time.”
To mitigate the potential of recency bias, the organisers will conduct a midyear flash survey to be fielded in May 2025.