Being a smarter risk taker through digital transformation [REPORT]

Our 2019 Risk in Review Study reveals six behaviors that divide risk functions into those helping their organizations take smarter risks on their digital journeys—a group we call Dynamics—and those a step or more behind: the Actives and the Beginners. The groups tell us that risk management, internal audit and compliance professionals (or, collectively risk functions)—far from stalling digital initiatives—can help their organizations meet or beat their transformation goals. Certain risk functions are there now. For others, it’s time to take action.

What is common among Dynamics, who represent a quarter of the 1,000 risk functions among the 2,000 executives we surveyed? They’re digitally fit. They engage early in digital initiatives. And they’re digitally overhauling their own functions by staffing and equipping them with data-driven capabilities (including skills, tools and techniques) by serving up more real-time insights, and by acting in concert with their functional peers to deliver a common view of risks.

Those efforts bring leaders a more precise line of sight into risks from digital opportunities so they can make more-informed decisions. Being more exact and predictive is important in a data-rich but insights-poor world. Just 22% of chief executives in our 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey call the risk exposure data they receive comprehensive enough to inform their decisions. That figure is—alarmingly—unchanged in 10 years.

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