Technology is playing an increasingly significant role in shaping an organisation’s exposure to risk, their appetite for taking risk in pursuit of new opportunities, and the tools they are using to mitigate it and build resilience.
Only inflation ranks higher than cyber (the top tech-related threat) in terms of the risks respondents feel most exposed to, while other digital and tech risks are almost on a par with macroeconomic volatility.
A third of CEO respondents in the survey say they feel highly or extremely exposed to cyber risk, and those leaders primarily responsible for managing risk ranked cyber risk above inflation.
Survey further showed such tech-related risks, from cyber attack to costly—and potentially brand damaging mistakes in deploying technology are not putting organisations off investing in technology.
Organisations are proactively assessing and mitigating these risks to transform and to manage their costs, support growth and ultimately build their resilience.
Preparing for technology investments, from cloud to emerging technologies such as GenAI, is the single biggest motivating factor for an organisation to review its risk landscape cited by 57% of respondents overall, and 62% of respondents from large organisations with revenues of USD$5bn or more.
That is higher than organisations being triggered into a review by a risk event (50%) or entering new markets (46%), marking a step-change in where and why risks are assessed.
Technology disruptors are also much more likely to be seen as opportunities than risks compared to other external non-tech disruptors.
For example, 60% of respondents see GenAI as an opportunity compared to just 35% who see changes in regulation as an opportunity and 28% who see supply chain disruption as an opportunity.
Given their position at the forefront of exploring and implementing emerging tech across their organisations, the results also show respondents in operations and tech roles are more likely than all the other job roles and functions to see GenAI as an opportunity over risk.
This enthusiasm for GenAI echoes separate PwC research, the Global Digital Trust Insights Survey, which found 77% of respondents stating that GenAI will help their organisation develop new lines of business over the next three years, while our Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey of more than 50,000 workers reveals employees see more positive than negative impacts from AI on their roles, despite headlines about AI-fueled job losses.
“Artificial intelligence automation can help us improve efficiency, while data analysis capabilities can help us make more accurate judgments and mitigate risks.”
We have analysed risk appetite and preference for value creation versus value protection among our respondents and plotted this against the maturity of an organisation’s human-led, tech-powered approach. This reveals four illustrative risk archetypes.
And when we then looked at those organisations achieving the greatest range of outcomes, we identified a small distinct group of top-performing Risk Pioneers leading the way.
Risk Pioneers are blazing a trail in reframing risk as a value creation opportunity for their organisations. This top performing 5% of organisations, built on enterprise-wide resilience and driven by a balanced human-led, tech-powered approach to risk, are already achieving more successful outcomes than others.
