Lingering economic uncertainties, political issues, natural disasters and other catastrophic events present a challenging environment for businesses and risk managers in their ongoing efforts to protect the enterprise against loss. The need for strong relationships between insurers and clients therefore has never been greater.

As commercial insurance clients are becoming more cost conscious and focused on price and coverage limits more than long-term relationships, insurers must be more responsive and attentive than ever. Will businesses be willing to turn to external partners to finance their risk, or perhaps might they throw caution to the wind, downplay risk and buy less coverage?

The events on 9/11 twelve years ago forever changed the landscape. The unpredictability of external risks, like terror attacks and super storms, leads some risk managers to actually purchase less coverage. To be sure, preventable risks through operational breakdown—such as the BP Horizon catastrophe, cyber attack and simple human error—as well as often-positive strategic or entrepreneurial risk taking—such as building a fertilizer plant near a school because of a railway's proximity—are indeed more predictable and arguably require more attention.