Each year, BDO surveys more than 500 C-suite leaders across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Americas who offer their insight and opinions on risk. The resulting annual 2026 Global Risk Landscape Report has become an important source of information on how business leaders and senior risk specialists perceive and manage the risks their businesses face.
One of the themes noted in our 2026 report, Risk Everywhere: extending ownership beyond the risk function, is how businesses are responding to deeply interconnected, fast-moving threats amplified by geopolitical instability, technological disruption and economic volatility. For business leaders, change and disruption are no longer the exception – they have become the baseline. And there is now a case for shared, cross-functional ownership of risk.
Key Findings from the report:
- Why uncertainty is now structural, and why waiting for stability is no longer a viable strategy: with 80 percent of business leaders say the global risk environment is more defined by crisis than ever before.
- How geopolitical risk has become the multiplier shaping all other risks, from supply chains to cyber and regulation.
- Why cyber is now a top three risk organizations feel unprepared for, despite rising investment.
- How fraud risk is being underestimated as AI-powered fraud accelerates: 93 percent of leaders do not see fraud as a top risk.
- Why AI is amplifying governance and control weaknesses rather than addressing them: only 13 percent of organizations are actively updating defenses against AI-driven fraud, down from 79 percent a year ago.
- The case for shared, cross-functional ownership of risk that enables faster, confident decision-making.
The problem is that many organizations are still functioning with a risk management approach that is too narrow and theoretical to effectively act,” writes Erin Sells, pricipal, Risk Advisory Services at BDO USA. “The pace of change means businesses can no longer just sit on the sidelines and wait for conditions to improve: they must be ready to act decisively and take calculated risks even when the path ahead may be unclear,” she says. 