While globalization has brought many benefits to businesses, companies need to spend more time studying the new and emerging risks involved and planning for low-probability events, Lloyd's warns.

In its latest “360 Insight Report”–”Globalization And Risks For Business: Implications Of An Increasingly Interconnected World”–Lloyd's noted that the last 20 years has seen rapid integration in societies and economies, offering unprecedented opportunities tempered by a range of new risks to contend with.

Among the challenges cited by the chair of Lloyd's, Lord Peter Levene, in a forward to the report: “Is globalization a runaway train? Are we now vainly looking toward national governments to solve problems and crises which are international in nature? Has world trade grown too quickly to be governed by the rules currently in place?”