Finding Opportunity in the Future of Risk Management
It’s an exciting time to be in the finance function. Finance leaders have the opportunity today to move from reporting on the business to driving strategic outcomes within the business. Not only is the finance function being disrupted, the tools that finance leaders have at their disposal are experiencing an unprecedented amount of disruption as well. With all of this change comes the strategic and operational imperative to manage risk.
To understand how modern finance leaders are managing risk, Dun & Bradstreet conducted a survey in 2018 of finance leaders across industries, functional roles, and business sizes to comment on the risks they were facing, how they used data to manage that risk, and how they saw their organizations adopting emerging technologies and tools.
Global Risk Study Findings
In spite of the promises of emerging technologies and tools, finance leaders are struggling to manage risk effectively with data, and many rate their own ability to manage and monitor risk as particularly challenging.
- Finance Teams Struggle to Manage Risk
- Tomorrow’s Risk Management Is Hampered by Today’s Data Practices
- The Future of Finance & Technology: Revolution, Evolution or Devolution?
Overall, most finance leaders believe their own efforts to manage, monitor, and predict risk pose a moderate to high risk to their businesses.
Finance leaders simply aren’t leveraging modern methods of risk management to the fullest. Nearly half are still collecting data in silos and not sharing it across the company, although most are using data to manage risk today.
Many finance leaders see promise in automation and the use of credit reports, data, and analytics to help manage risk, yet most respondents currently rate themselves as “low” in sophistication, or they do not use these tools at all.
It’s clear that finance teams are still in the beginning stages of implementing emerging technologies, tools, and data sources to help manage risk. Many finance leaders also face external threats within their industries, such as geopolitical risk, bankruptcies, and technological disruption. In order to manage these threats, finance leaders will need to adopt new approaches to managing risk.