Resilience of the financial system to natural disasters

The Covid-19 crisis and the subsequent downturn have reinforced the need to evaluate and address highly disruptive environment-related events as well as the strategic importance of sustainable finance in the upcoming years. The pandemic may serve as an experimental study to learn about climate change mitigation policies. Similar to the coronavirus outbreak, climate change involves the realisation of tail-related events manifested as global externalities that pose systemic financial risk, involve market failures, and call for supportive public intervention and international coordination…

How companies can avoid becoming a “hostage to fortune”

Prevention is better than a cure. That well-recognised proverb, which is widely attributed to the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, may have been around for over 500 years now but it’s showing no signs of declining in relevance. It has found its latest benediction in FM Global’s 2021 ‘Resilience Index’, a ranking of 130 countries and territories by the resilience of their business environments.

“It’s all too easy to fall into the zone of thinking ‘there’s nothing I can do’ about risk, when the reality is that there is an awful lot that business leaders can and should do to protect themselves.”

Andrew Bryson

While the online index is just one of the many tools implemented by FM Global, according to Andrew Bryson (pictured), operations manager at the mutual insurer’s London operations, it has significant implications for senior leaders looking to lower their global exposure to risk and boost the overall resilience of their enterprise. At the heart of the ranking is the company’s mantra, he said: ‘the majority of losses are preventable’….