In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing cyber risk and rise in property and casualty (P&C) Insurance rates across all lines of coverage, organizations are putting more emphasis on risk management than ever before. These and other risks — including regulation, supply chain interruption and natural disaster — contribute to escalating financial consequences.

According to Price Waterhouse Cooper's (PwC) "Broking 2020: Leading from the front in a new era of risk" report, 74% of survey participants look to brokers for data analytics to help inform their decision-making. This follows a previous PwC global survey of approximately 2,000 business executives and risk managers worldwide, which indicated that 75% of respondents were investing resources to create a more risk-aware company culture, with one in four identifying fragmented risk data as the largest capacity gap. Further, 82% percent of respondents said they planned to develop an in-depth process to identify and monitor risk continually, a trend corroborated by the Risk Management Society's (RIMS) Excellence in Risk Management XI survey. Though 90% of C-suite respondents said risk management impacts business strategy, only 25% feel their companies use risk management to its fullest ability. Key areas in which the use of data and analytics can be improved include risk identification, quantification and mitigation.

As has been the case in other areas of business, the pandemic has accelerated the acceptance and use of risk identification and mitigation data analytics. Therefore, organizations not embracing this needed approach are missing significant opportunities to gain better safety-performance insights and reduce the total cost of risk while enhancing their ability to measure and optimize return on investment.