TROUBLE IN TRIPLICATE: RISK, COMPLIANCE AND CONTROLS
Today’s risk landscape is crowded and complicated for companies. The multidimensional nature of traditional and emerging risks poses significant challenges to resilience, safety and operational and business continuity, as well as all manner of compliance headaches.
Such risks can be related to different areas of activities such as new processes, new technologies, a new type of workplace, or social or organisational change, while also interrelating with processes including globalisation, digitalisation, innovation and cross-boundary operations.
Pulling no punches as to the gravity of the risks facing companies is the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) ‘Global Risks Report 2023’, which notes that the health and economic aftereffects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have quickly spiralled into compounding crises, with carbon emissions having climbed as the post-pandemic global economy fired back up.
In addition, food and energy have become weaponised by the war in Ukraine, sending inflation soaring to levels not seen in decades, globalising a cost-of-living crisis and fuelling social unrest. Moreover, the resulting shift in monetary policy marks the end of an economic era defined by easy access to cheap debt and will have vast ramifications for governments, companies and individuals, widening inequality within and between countries.
“The persistence of these crises is already reshaping the world that we live in, ushering in economic and technological fragmentation,” says Saadia Zahidi, a managing director at the WEF. “A continued push for national resilience in strategic sectors will come at a cost – one that only a few economies can bear. Geopolitical dynamics are also creating significant headwinds for global cooperation.”
Oct-Dec 2023 Issue
Fraser Tennant