The 2020 reboot: A New Definition of Catastrophic Risk

The time is late 2019. You’re reviewing the year’s achievements, mapping out your attack on 2020, and wrapping up projects before things slow down briefly and we all collectively pause while the decade winds down. At least it felt like that. Inboxes continued to rattle, commerce continued to ebb and flow, and innovation saw no signs of slowing. Risks were right there with them and you were unsure of what all the headwinds of 2020 would look like, but you were increasingly working to get comfortable with the next decade’s advancements, accelerators, and pitfalls. Staffing concerns, like how to recruit and retain the right people, likely kept you up at night. You knew that data protection, monetization, and increasing governance would be a key challenge in 2020, but you were eager to meet the scaling challenges that a new decade offered. 

Enter 2020. 

New Challenges, New Reality

Concerns about retaining talent quickly shifted to focus on remote management fire drills and an exercise in IT full-court press. Once workplaces were remote, the focus shifted to scaling talent (both up and down), which quickly became about managing costs, long-term vision, and pivoting objectives. Pressing pause was not an option, but drinking from the firehose would need an entirely new lens, strategy and attack.  Six months later, the newly decentralized tech world is still adapting, and a new normal is starting to settle in. It’s uncomfortable – the existing concerns, risks and challenges never left – but there is opportunity and innovation for those who can navigate these waters successfully. 

We want to help.  

A New Definition of Catastrophic Risk – 2020 Technology Risk Study 

Each year Marsh conducts in-depth research with leading technology experts to create an analytics report of the emerging risks and trends facing the tech space. It covers the opinions, concerns and thoughts of the top tech minds and turns it into a powerful, easily digestible report.  

Refocusing on Key Risks 

We still need to talk about the effects the pandemic has had on workplaces and the risks it has created, and we’re here to support and advise you, but there is a constantly evolving cachet of risks that we need to get back to talking about as well. Those risks haven’t disappeared. These are the risks you told us were keeping you up at night. Risks you were actively planning against and looking for mitigation and protection from. Risks like these:

Now some of these stats have moved and some of these have evolved since we engaged in our discussions with tech leaders in late 2019 (at the time, only 11% of respondents viewed employee safety as a growing risk in 2020 - If we only knew!) This is just one snapshot of a data-driven, industry-focused report that is available digitally to read here. 

Throughout the year we’ll be connecting with you to discuss the stats, trends and data in the report – looking at what has changed, what has emerged, and what the Tech industry should consider next.