The risk that first appeared was geopolitical risk, then energy prices and food market risk appeared. A disrupted shipping route created supply chain risk. Following on its heels was cyber operations risk, and then production and financial risk.
In her welcome address, PARIMA President Annacel Natividad drew the lines between the risks mentioned above and asked, “Were they different risks, or one event creating a chain of consequences?”
And while Ms Natividad described the industry as very good at identifying risk for decades, saying, “We categorise, assess, put controls, transfer, monitor, report them to our management and board, and put the risks into neat boxes.
“But disruption does not read out risk registers. Disruption causes risk. A geopolitical event can become a supply chain disruption; a cyber incident can become a business interruption; an AI failure can become a governance and reputational issue; a climate event can become an operational, financial and insurance event; and a people issue can we can very quickly become a business continuity issue.”
She said, “One risk can trigger another one, and disruption can amplify another. Additionally, sometimes the most consequential risk is not the risk itself but the connection between risks.
“This is what we mean by the new risk order. It is not simply about having more risk: it is about new relationships between risk.”
Risks are converging and moving faster
According to Ms Natividad, risks are now also converging and moving faster.
“They are crossing functions, borders and interacting in ways that the industry’s traditional approaches were not always designed to handle,” she said.
“The world has changed faster than the model.”
As a result, as Ms Natividad described it, “the question is no longer simply how we manage more risk, but how we lead in a world where everything is becoming connected”.
The Pan-Asia Risk and Insurance Management Association (PARIMA) concluded its 2026 regional events calendar in Singapore on 15 October, under the theme ‘The New Risk Order’.