Risk awareness rises in the East
Business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region have significantly raised their assessment of the seriousness of all five categories of risk since 2009.
Business risks rise from a priority score of 6.5 in 2009 to 7.7 today, economic risks from 6.6 to 7.3, political risk from 5.0 to 6.1 and natural hazards from 4.3 to 5.4. The sharpest rise of all has been in the perception of environmental risks.
Concern about talent and skills shortages is considerably higher in Asia-Pacific than in other regions of the world.
Having experienced a devastating year of natural catastrophes it’s not surprising that the Asia-Pacific region gives the risk category natural hazards the highest priority of all other world regions.
What is, perhaps, surprising is that respondents still believe they are slightly over-prepared for the risk.
Given the severe gap between the total economic loss to the region from the Japanese earthquake and the much lower value of insurance claims made, the belief in near-parity between risk priority and preparedness may be harder to justify.
