As we move headstrong into the 21st century, enterprise risk management as we know it has become much more visible to the C-suite. We, as practitioners, need to continue to think about how to build resilient strategies for risks that are becoming more commonplace and more difficult to manage effectively. With the insurance marketplace hardening for the first time in quite a few years, those tasked with risk management within firms need to think about strategies to strengthen a company's resilience and engage alternate methods beyond risk transfer.

Crises of all sorts are becoming more prevalent than ever. Our business environment is becoming much more complicated as a result of the connected global economy. This interconnectivity allows risk to have an immediate ripple effect in multiple parts of the world. The impact of the coronavirus, for example, has created not only a viral impact on health but also a sudden impact on global equity markets. On January 27, 2020, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 1.6%, wiping out the gains for the year. In addition, the Nasdaq composite had its worst day since August 2019, dropping 1.9%. This serves as an excellent example of global interconnectivity and its immediate impact on firms.

In thinking about the road ahead of us in 2020, The Risk Institute has focused on what we believe to be the top five risks facing organizations, highlighted in the slideshow above. With the rapid pace of global change, one thing is certain: The risks we will incur in the 21st century would not have been on our top five radar even as little as five years ago.