News built for finance pros
CFO Brew helps finance pros navigate their roles with insights into risk management, compliance, and strategy through our newsletter, virtual events, and digital guides.
Executives rated the economic climate, including inflation, as the greatest risk their companies will face in 2024, Protiviti’s 12th annual Top Risks survey found. The global survey polled 1,143 executives and board members from various industries, asking them to rank risk factors on a 1–10-point scale.
Talent, including succession issues and labor expectations, came in as the second-greatest risk. That situation’s reversed from last year’s survey, when talent was ranked the top risk and the economy the second-biggest risk.
None of those findings is especially surprising. What’s more striking is the degree to which executives have shifted their focus away from the post-pandemic work environment toward broader concerns. In last year’s survey, many of the top 10 risks executives identified were internal, including resistance to change (#4), work environment causing cultural changes (#6), not having a culture of identifying and escalating risks (#8), staff expectations around remote/hybrid work (#9), and lacking agility in the face of crises (#10).
This year, none of those risks made the top 10 list. Instead, executives seemed more concerned with external threats such as cyberattacks (#3), third-party risks (#4), and regulatory changes (#5). They were also worried about keeping up with technology, ranking tech skills gaps (#6) and outdated legacy tech (#7) as important risks to watch in 2024.
Executives also viewed supply chain disruptions as much less of a risk this year: It fell from 5th to 19th.
Israel-Hamas war enhanced perceptions of risk: Protiviti noted that respondents tended to rank risks as more severe after the Israel-Hamas war began in October. Prior to the war, no risk factor received an average ranking of more than 6, the level at which Protiviti considers a risk as having “significant impact.” After the war broke out, four factors did—economic, talent, cybersecurity, and third-party risks—and risk scores increased across the board.