Horizon Scanning Tool

There are plenty of challenges for risk leaders who are tackling the process of horizon scanning and who want to be confident that they are identifying the correct threats and opportunities. This is because emerging risks, by their very nature, are hard to define and are “out there” in the distance.

Emerging risk has become a much bigger focus for companies in the wake of the pandemic, and we have received feedback from members that they are very interested in trying to work out what is on the horizon.

The emerging risk tool collates information that would otherwise take members a long time to put together, and presents in an accessible, easy-to-understand format – users can either employ the tool to complete a brief scan of relevant data, or drill down further to focus on the detail they are really interested in.

For risk managers who are new to emerging risk and are just starting to build up their organisation’s horizon scanning capabilities, the tool represents a good starting point. Equally, experienced risk leaders can use the tool to find the data they need quickly, saving time and resources.

Some companies (although not all) include emerging risks in their annual report. We feed the data from these reports into the tool, along with emerging risks highlighted in reports by associations, consultants and global organisations (e.g. the World Economic Forum or the European Commission). When then use natural language processing tools to align risks with a particular category.

We added the Trends tab at the end of 2021, based on requests from members. This section of the tool allows users to see how emerging risks are changing over time.

For example, geopolitical risk was an especially hot topic in 2019, and while it is still being highlighted a lot by businesses, it has become less prominent compared to other risks since then.

There are also options to filter by year and source (e.g. company report or external report) to provide a more focused view of emerging risk trends.

As with our other tools, we are looking at expanding their geographic scope to include companies in the Middle East and other regions.

Another option we are considering is to focus more closely on the top five emerging risk categories, adding more detail on these specifically so that members have all the data they need to make their own horizon scanning and reporting processes as effective as possible.