Health, workforce wellbeing and emerging technology risks used to sit on the margins of corporate risk registers – flagged in committee papers but often relegated behind more “serious” threats like economic shocks or extreme weather. No longer.
According to the latest World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey, supported by Zurich Insurance Group and Marsh McLennan, business leaders across the G20 are now pushing social and technological risks sharply up the agenda – from gaps in social protections to misinformation and the adverse impacts of AI. Extreme weather has even dropped out of the top five near term risks cited by G20 executives over the next two years, while AI‑driven misinformation and disinformation have entered the list for the first time.
For insurers and brokers, that shift is not just an academic reshuffle of rankings. It signals a profound reordering of how risk is experienced in boardrooms – and where the industry will be expected to respond.
David Wainwright, chief risk officer at Zurich Australia & New Zealand said the rise of health and technology concerns in this annual survey of more than 10,000 executives is not a surprise – it confirms what Zurich was already seeing in its own data.
“As one of Australia’s largest life insurers, the emergence of declining health and wellbeing as a new key concern in the survey is both alarming and unsurprising given some of the trends we have been witnessing in our own claims data and analysis,” said Wainwright.
Both in Australia and globally, this key finding in the survey highlights the importance of resilience and prevention as a continued area of focus for insurers and brokers.
The language of “health and wellbeing” has long been associated with HR initiatives, EAP programs and employee benefits. But the claims experience now suggests something much larger is in play.
Wainwright said the trends emerging across life and disability portfolios are increasingly reflective of deeper pressures in the wider population. “Industry-wide claims trends are often reflective of issues impacting the broader population,” he said. “For example, growing rates of cancer diagnosis, mental health issues and musculoskeletal conditions.”
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These shifts carry a double sting. First, more people are becoming unwell, or are unable to work to their full capacity, at significant economic and personal cost. Second, the cost of treating many conditions has risen sharply, which is particularly confronting for those without insurance or access to robust public health systems. For life insurers and group schemes, that combination is already putting pressure on loss ratios and pricing, particularly in group risk and income protection portfolios.
That is why declining health and wellbeing can no longer be treated purely as a workplace wellbeing challenge. It is morphing into a systemic national risk: eroding productivity, straining public services, and widening social protection gaps. For insurers and brokers, that changes the conversation with corporate clients from “benefit design” to resilience and risk prevention at scale.
At the same time, executives are now far more alive to the downside of technology. AI, cyber and digital disruption have been on risk maps for years, but the survey suggests they are now widely viewed as concrete near term threats, not distant hypotheticals.
The rise of AI enabled misinformation and disinformation – and the potential for deepfakes, manipulation of public opinion, and attacks on critical infrastructure – has pushed technological threats into the top tier of risks for G20 leaders. In markets including United States, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Indonesia, “adverse outcomes of frontier technologies” have entered the top five risks for the first time.
For insurers, this is more than just cyber premium growth or the refinement of wordings. Technology risk is cutting across lines of business: from professional indemnity and D&O exposure around AI governance failures, to business interruption risks tied to system outages, to reputational and liability risks driven by synthetic media and manipulated data. That is already surfacing in coverage disputes and renewed scrutiny of policy wordings around AI‑generated content and operational technology outages.
Brokers, meanwhile, are being pulled into an even more advisory role. Clients need help to understand and quantify these intertwined tech threats – and to navigate a market where cyber capacity, terms and exclusions are evolving in real time.
One of the most difficult implications of this shifting risk order is that it does not allow for tidy prioritisation. Economic downturn, climate, health, technology and social fragmentation are not competing storylines; they’re intertwined plot points in the same narrative.
Wainwright is wary of any temptation to declare a single dominant threat. “Undoubtedly, the risk environment has become increasingly complex and interconnected,” he said. “Whilst the survey demonstrates risk perceptions among leaders at a point in time, it must be acknowledged that the risk landscape is constantly changing and there is no 'one' risk we should focus on.”
For insurers and brokers, that interconnectedness of these risks, particularly now that heath and technology are in the mix, can have three practical consequences:
1. Product silos will struggle in a world where a mental health claim may be linked to economic stress, digital overwork and weak social supports – and where a cyber incident can trigger regulatory, reputational and even physical risks.
2. Prevention and resilience need to move from the margins of strategy decks to the centre of the value proposition. That means using claims data, analytics and behavioural insights not just to price risk, but to help reduce it – through wellness programs, early intervention, digital hygiene and more responsive coverage structures.
3. Cross‑sector collaboration becomes critical. Health systems, regulators, employers and insurers are confronting the same structural pressures: ageing populations, rising treatment costs, rapid technological change and limited fiscal headroom. Brokers are in a unique position to connect these dots for clients, translating emerging global risk insights into local program design and boardroom conversations.
The survey suggests business leaders are finally looking past the most obvious economic headlines to the slower‑burn risks shaping the next decade. For the insurance industry, that is both a challenge and an opportunity: a challenge to adapt risk frameworks to a messier, more interconnected world – and an opportunity to lead on resilience, not just recovery.
