Allianz Risk Barometer 2026

Could a cyber attack hit your business as hard as a natural disaster? Are you ready for today's fast changing risks? Welcome to Insurance Business TV. Today we're diving into the Allianz Risk Barometer, Allianz's annual snapshot of the top global business risk. Now in its 15th year, Allianz Risk Barometer reflects the views of over 3,300 risk professionals from nearly 100 countries and 23 industry sectors. The survey gathers insights from Allianz clients, brokers, industry bodies and senior risk leaders, including underwriters, executives and claims specialists. It ranks the top 10 most important business risks globally This year, the key takeaway is not only the severity of these risks, but how interconnected they have become as technology, geopolitics and regulation increasingly reinforce each other. To help break down what these risks mean for companies, I'm joined by product leaders from Allianz Commercial in New York. Joining me, we have Melissa Hill, Regional Head of Claims, North America. Konstantinos Papapatridis, Regional Manager for North America at Allianz Risk Consulting. Jared Schlesinger, Global Head of Financial Lines and Cyber. So cyber risks remain the top threats today. I was wondering if you could explain how you're seeing that in your side of the business. So from a claims perspective, so when cyber claims used to come in the door, it was all about a data breach, right? Pretty simple. Fix it. Let's move on. We didn't get a lot of ransoms that didn't come in the door. If we did, we paid it. Everybody was back up and running. Now they're a little more complicated, right? So when a claim comes in the door, we're pretty focused on, oh boy, we need to do something, right? Because now we have all these supply chains. We have third party vendors. Things are getting very integrated, connected. You got global infrastructure. They're shut down, right? They can't get the business up and running. Sometimes they're trying to figure out where is it shut down? Which vendor is involved? How do I work through this? Do I have cyber insurance? What does it actually cover, right? So we're working through a lot of that process and there's a lot of dependency. Yeah. And this is what we try to do. We try to understand what's the, let's say the house calling of our clients. What's the contingency plan they have? How deeply understand the risk? How much they have invested both financial resources and people resources in actually protecting their business. And this is a big part because right now it doesn't matter the size of the business. Everybody uses technology and they're exposed equally. Might be a small company but the impact might be disproportionately large to affect. I believe that this is one of the most important risks as we have seen also in the risk barometer. It's number one for some years now and it's not by accident in that place because businesses are impacted in the most catastrophic way because it goes through all facets of their operations, right? Absolutely. I mean, I think from a perspective of our insurance to separate the operational part of it, the finance part of it from cyber would be impossible at this point. I mean, when you have any cyber related event, it will absolutely impact the operational aspects of the company and their finances. And so when you look at it, you know, companies have to be really prepared for dealing with that. And there's examples of, you know, good preparation yielding good results and no preparation or poor preparation yielding way less, you know, positive results. So think of all of the domino effect. So you have all these other customers and clients that are now affected downstream that they're not running. Their business is not running. They might have cyber insurance. They might not have cyber insurance. They might not have coverage. Right. So then you've got multiple players. And if there are other carriers involved, then we're all talking. Everybody's trying to work together, but we all are trying to figure out, OK, but where did this where did this actually happen and what's the source? It gets more complex the more you dig into it. So as a claims professional, you're working through these problems, but you also are trying to communicate with your client, right, and keep them updated. Speed is of essence, right, to get these things resolved quickly. The main concept behind the cyber attack. Here's the thing. Here's how the complexity has skyrocketed during the last couple of years. In the past, you needed some people who were really smart and knowledgeable, and they were able to exploit vulnerabilities of the system because the web, the communication system, the technology that we have in place, it has, let's say, some kinds of doors that they can actually open. OK, right now with AI technology in place, this has lowered the bar. So someone who can use the tool and without having good knowledge of how to commit this crime, they can actually have in their hands ways to attack businesses. And this has created a totally different environment. There would be a reason they'd go after your company. They had some gripe with your company or there was some political statement or some sort of reason why that company was a target. And now I would say almost anybody can be a target if you have vulnerabilities and they can get in because they can hold you and your company for ransomware. And so you can be a school board. You can be a not-for-profit. You can be a huge publicly traded company anywhere in the world. I think you're a target. And so it's no longer that there has to be a draw to make you a target. It's just being out there and being a company or an entity makes you a target. Thank you. I mean, let's move over to AI-related risks, interesting, the fastest growing over the risk on the barometer. Now, Jared, I wonder if you can talk about how you're seeing that in your lines. Sure. AI is, you know, it's a relatively new thing, right? So when I think about this, I think we're really in the early stages of what AI is. What does it mean? What does it mean for a company? What does it mean for individuals? What does it mean for insurance and claims and all those things? As an industry, we're still in the fact-finding stage. We're in the question-asking stage. We're asking questions of our insureds. We're asking questions of our partners, whether it's on the broker side or the advisor side. And we're just trying to get as much information as we can. And I think we can all agree that, you know, there's AI that can be used for good and that can be used for bad. And it's really trying to understand how companies are going to use it and companies are going to implement it into their processes, into their operations. The potential to save companies tons of money is there, but the downside definitely also exists. And so, you know, how is a company looking at that? Okay. And Kostas, from a risk perspective, I was wondering if you can talk to us. AI is a very challenging technology as far as risks are concerned. Of course, it's a technology, it's a tool, so it can materialize in different kinds of risks. When we talk with our clients from our perspective, from an engineering perspective, we try to understand what's the legal framework that they have been operating. So, one of the challenges that we have on a global scale is that there is no common AI legal framework. So, European Union, they have the AI Act that was released, I think, a year ago, maybe a bit more. In the United States, we have a fragmented approach, I would say, as far as product liability is concerned, because AI is treated as a product. So, as a product, when you deliver it, and if it works as it is intended, there is no liability in place. If you modify it as a user, and most of the time, you won't modify it, because it's a model, it's a technology, and you want to bring it as close as to your needs as possible, then you might be liable if this AI tool creates some kind of damage. And when we say AI, we shouldn't only focus on the large language models like subjectivity and everything like this that we use. AI could be in a self-driving car, it could be in a robot that does another kind of operation. It can create claims in many different objects, right? Absolutely. And so, when a claim comes in the door, it's a whole new landscape, right? So, as a claims professional, the basic questions we used to ask are different questions, right? So, you almost have to have IT skills, understand what does AI do? How does it work? So, when a claim comes in, you're asking different questions, because you have to start probing to understand, are they using AI? Is it a different process? Was AI involved? Was there a robot involved? Was it a product liability claim? Like, you're literally having to think through that when claims come in the door, but you're also looking at the documents. Were these AI generated? Are they real documents? Is this a real photo? I mean, there's a lot of things that are now changing in that landscape. So, what you used to think is just a simple claim, you're like, wow, let me double check this, let me dig a little bit deeper. Yeah, I think some of the other things, like, when we think about AI, right, what can cause the liability? I mean, it can be copyright infringement, right? It can be AI washing. It can be bias in the data. I mean, there's so many different aspects of what could create a problem for a company that uses AI. And on the financial line side, we're seeing, I don't want to call it a proliferation, but certainly meaningful amounts of AI-related claims. I believe it was 17 claims in 2025 security claims in North America. And I think that related to about 8% of the overall security claims. We're in it, right? We're in the mix now. Geopolitical risks and supply chains are top of mind for many organizations. I again, wondered if you could talk to me on how you're seeing that in your area. Yeah, this is a very critical area. Actually, in the risk barometer, we have seen that this is one of the black swans, as we named them, which means that this is a risk supply chain paralysis on a global scale. It's a risk that we expect to materialize maybe in the next five years. There are the right geopolitical conditions in place, challenges, if you like, that could impact a large number of our clients and businesses and cause business interaction on their supply chain or in their operations, depending on the location. The way that we assess this risk is focusing mainly on what is the level of preparedness of each one of our clients that they have in place, how they understand the geopolitical environment globally, how they expect this to affect their operations, how they have prepared the risk mitigation measures in place and how they have diversified risk. I mean, as far as operations is concerned. Geopolitical risk is huge, right? And the impact it can have on our clients is really intense, right? Anytime there's anything that creates any sort of uncertainty or volatility, especially on the financial line side, that creates a lot of problems for our clients, right? So how do they mitigate that? How do you prepare for uncertainty? How do you prepare for volatility is going to be really important, right? And I think one of the things that, from my perspective, when I talk to our insurance and I see the ones who are best prepared is just staying informed, right? So you can't pretend the world isn't happening around you. You need to be part of that. You need to stay informed of that. You need to stand on the forefront of what the political issues are, the geopolitical issues are, and how they're going to impact you and how you can mitigate it. Yeah. So when a claim comes in the door, our customers, like they buy a policy, our promise is that we're going to fix it. We're going to pay them and they're going to go back in business. So the fact that Allianz is global, we have a lot of vendor partner relationships. We spend a lot of time vetting that out, make sure we're diversified. We have a lot of people that can come to the rescue, forensic accountings, loss adjusting firms, right? We try to make sure we don't tap ourselves out, right? We learned that in some of the catastrophic events and we make sure that we use our other Allianz partners, like Allianz Trade. They have data on supply chain. So we use that data to help us make sure that we have the right partners to respond when we need to respond and we get creative. Sometimes we have to get very creative and provide different materials and we might have to pay a little more, but that's okay because we want to get them back in business and help them mitigate the claim and keep running. Business interruptions remains critical. How are companies building resilience? Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of building resilience is focusing on the right things, right? And building resilience is absolutely important. I think it starts with board oversight. The company needs to have intense board oversight over business or interruption and how they're going to deal with it and what that means and what it looks like and what it will cost and how to build redundancies and how you can make yourself more resilient. I also think a lot of that is very, very focused on making sure you have the right experts in terms of hiring the right advisors, whether it's, again, lawyers, accountants, consultants, whatever, cyber experts, you need to have that sort of expert assistance at all levels of the company. And I think it's really important that you're consistently and constantly investing in that resiliency. It's not like I did it today and now I'm good. It's, I did it today and I'm going to do it tomorrow and the day after and the day after and the day after. So it's a constant need to stay on top of that resiliency and how you can continue to enhance it and build upon it and make it stronger each and every day. So from a claims perspective, I'm just going to go back about 20 years. A lot of the companies are now having risk managers involved. They have entire programs, a risk manager, teams of risk managers. I was just reading an article before joining you that their salaries have increased by almost 150% and they are hiring risk managers at all of these companies, not just large companies, mid-size and even small companies because it's critical that these risk managers put these risk management programs together, right? Just like Jared said, they've got to understand the entire business. What's going on from a business continuity plan? What's their data? They've got to have risk management tools. They've got to have data flowing in. They've got to understand the emerging risks, right? So as part of claims, we collect a lot of data. So we're trying to put all that data together, push it back out. So they have predictive tools to say, look, these are the losses that come in. You might want to take a look at that. Here's how it fits into your business and your portfolio. We have claims business relationship managers that work with our accounts. They do stewardship meetings. They share that information to say, make sure you might want to run through this. You might want to check that part of the business, right? So we're doing that in conjunction with our risk consultants. So they get the full portfolio and they get the whole view of their actual programs and what their risks might look like. What we have been communicating to our clients is that resilience is a journey. It's not a destination. It's something, as Jared said, it's an ongoing effort. And this is resilience actually is a milestone showing how we see risk, not only from insurance perspective, but also how clients we expect to see risk, which is not a static situation where you manage your exposures for now and maybe the next couple of years. You need to actually see your risks as they're going to evolve through all the changes that are going to take place throughout the next few years and how this will change dynamically the environment. So go from a static situation to a dynamic situation where we have a vector, a time vector showing forward. And we expect that our clients, they will actually understand this vector and we will implement the consequences of this time change in the risk environment and how it will affect their businesses and the specific exposure that may have in the operation. Either this is a cyber, this is a supply chain, manufacturing, raw materials, cargo, moving their products from one place to another place. And they need to have an approach that they will give them an understanding. Well, you know, things are changing and we need to implement the factor of change or how they will change the profile of risk and how the risk will actually affect on what we do and how we do it. So let's move over to the interconnectivity of risks and certainly emerging and evolving risks in the future. Yeah, this is the new reality as both our clients and we have been seeing right now. Supply chain exposure, cyber risks, natural catastrophes, climate change, everything ties in the same risk environment. And our clients are exposed at the same time in different facets of these risks. When we talk with our clients, when we visit their sites, we try to understand how they mitigate this exposure, how deep they can understand this interconnectedness. And at the same time, because we have the expertise, we have the experience, we have seen a lot of different kinds of business with not only our regional network, but also our global network. We have the ability to talk with them and give them some recommendations of how they can best prepare for the risks that they have been experiencing. On top of this, we do a lot of work on emerging risks, risks that they haven't materialized yet, but we see as technology moves forward that they will create some significant exposures. Like, for example, we have been talking about carbon capture and we have been talking about data centers and the energy needs that these data are going to have. So we're going to hear, we're going to see operations in locations far up north that we haven't actually had so far at this point, except for maybe for mining. We may see operations in space in the next few years where we'll have different kinds of challenges. We will see also risks coming from the AI space that we haven't even thought about right now. And this will create a different kind of environment for claims, for example, with new challenges, right? Right. Absolutely. Thanks, Costas. And so think about claims. You know, we had paper files, right? And it's the anniversary of Katrina. I handled some of those claims. We did a lot of that in paper files. And now we're using claim management systems, digital tools. But the customer experience now is they want to handle a claim on an iPhone, right? They want it very simple and they want it fast. You know, Allianz is a global company. So we're thinking through how do we make the customer experience the best way possible, right? And still make sure we follow regulation because we do have regulators that are watching us. We're building all of these digital tools, working through the technology, straight through processing. Can we advance pay people? Can we do it through a Venmo process? Can we track it? How do we get these tools in place to make that customer experience much easier, right? And much easier of a process. But can we get some of the information up front, right? Use our risk consulting partners to do that because if we get a lot of this up front in the portfolio process when they purchase the policy, I don't have to ask for it, right? It's already there. These documents are sitting there. We can feed them in. We can use AI. We can use some of the tools, right? And it's more about the operational flexibility that we can meet all those regulatory guidelines and then pay people faster, get them back in business and just manage the claim. That's the expectation. That's what everybody's expecting. As these risks continue and we get new risks coming in that we're learning about, we're going to have to adapt. The technology is going to have to adapt to it. We have to be able to respond and do it quickly, right? Because that's what they're buying, right, Jared? Absolutely. In my perspective, there's so many new risks we're going to have to deal with. There's so much in terms of claims and how they're going to be handled. And I think from my perspective, it's how can people best prepare for what's going to happen in the future. And so I think for me, the first thing you need to do is assess, right? You need to constantly be assessing what your business looks like. I think the next thing you need to do is you need to prepare for mitigation, right? How are you going to mitigate the issues you see, the concerns you see? And then you need to prepare, prepare, prepare, right? It's be ready, have a plan, be ready to execute on the plan, have fire drills in terms of executing on the plan. If this happens, we're going to do this, and let's pretend that's happening and let's do it. And so you need to prepare, prepare, prepare. And then lastly, you have to think and have a plan for disclosure, because how you're going to handle these things, be really ready to know how you're going to disclose when an issue happens. You need to be ready to have all your experts in place for when an issue happens. And then you need to be ready to have all those things at your fingertips. So you're just ready to go in the event of an issue.