Environmental issues are at the bottom of business leaders’ concerns and set to fall further in 2022 according to specialist insurer Beazley’s new report Spotlight on Environmental Risks.
The new report in the Risk & Resilience series compares business leaders’ attitudes to different categories of risk and assesses perceptions of resilience.
A media release said only 12% of business leaders across 10 industry sectors in the UK and the US rank environmental concerns, including pandemic, climate change, environmental damage, food security and energy transition as their top risk category in 2021, falling to just 9% looking forward to 2022.
The research revealed that businesses may be focusing much of their effort on the interconnected legal, reputational and regulatory risks of compliance with ESG reporting, rather than actively addressing environmental risk. 18% of respondents ranked political and regulatory risks as their top concern in 2021.
Beazley head of responsible business Chris Illman said, “It is so surprising and concerning, that our research reveals that environmental risks ranked so low on business leaders’ list of concerns.”
“Environmental risk mitigation presents a significant challenge. The complexity and interconnectivity of the risks have the potential to generate claims that straddle traditional areas – from pollution and environmental damage, through to new areas of risk like greenwashing and reputation damage. But they also represent an opportunity to work with clients to go beyond pure risk transfer to improve management and mitigation of risks to minimise the likelihood of a loss event,” said Mr Illman. M