Emerging Risks Initiative - Major Trends and Emerging Risk Radar

In their Emerging Risk Initiative, the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) Forum, a group of professional risk managers from the insurance industry, including Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) experts, continually scans the horizon to identify and communicate emerging risks facing the insurance industry which are expected to have a significant impact on the insurance sector within 1 to 10 years.

The now updated 2022 Emerging Risk Radar is a summary of emerging risks and associated major trends that could affect the insurance sector over the next five years and beyond. Risks are classified low, medium or high according to their perceived materiality. Both the list of risks and the assessment of impact and timing are based on the expert opinion of the Emerging Risk Initiative (ERI) working group of the CRO Forum.

Compared to the Emerging Risk Radar 2021, the following major changes were made in the 2022 edition:

• The main trends have been assessed and updated. The “Consumer  Behavior Digitization” is merged to “Demographic and Social Change”. The “Urbanization and Social Change” is merged into the “Technological Developments & Impacts on Society”
• The new risks Climate Engineering (incl. Carbon Capture Storage) and Space Risk in Lower Earth Orbit were added, alongside the thorough review of the time horizon and impact classification of all emerging risks including their description as part of the radar.
• The risk “Food and Water Supply” has been removed from the radar und integrated in the description of “Resource and Supply Management”
• “Nanotechnology”, “Plastics and Microplastics” and the new risk of “Toxic Chemicals” have been merged under the new risk “Small Particles and Hazardous Chemicals”
• “Obesity” has been replaced by “Metabolic Syndrome”
• “Sharing Economy” has been removed from the radar as a risk and included in the trend of “Consumer Behavior and Digitization”
• “Shifting Range of Pathogens” and “Pandemics” has been merged under the new name of “Emerging Infectious Diseases”