According to QBE’s Unpredictability Index, businesses are operating in a far less predictable world, in large part a reflection of heightened political and economic risk. Almost all of the ‘least predictable years’ in the Index have occurred in the past 20 years, with the majority since the global financial crisis.   One of the most striking findings from the Index is the interconnectedness of factors driving unpredictability. Volatility in one area can have repercussions in another, prolonging periods of uncertainty.

Even closer to home, political risk is unpredictable. Brexit, for example, could have huge implications for UK/EU cross border supply chains – many UK businesses are maintaining stockpiles of key supplies while lengthy delays at UK ports have already affected the delivery of components and production capacity.

Societal and environmental concerns are also causing supply chain disruption. For example, when China suddenly banned the import of foreign plastic in 2018, US and

European waste companies had to quickly come up with solutions.

The reaction of regulators and customers is becoming more relevant, yet less predictable. In one recent claim we handled, a food manufacturer struggled to get customer approval after it switched production to an alternative factory following a fire. In another claim, a medical device manufacturer had to wait 18 months to get a new production facility certified by the regulator.

Today, problems are quick to arise, but take longer for businesses and supply chains to recover. Longer periods of disruption are evident in business interruption insurance, where periods of indemnity can now extend to as much as 24 or 36 months, up from the more usual 12 months.

While threats to supply chains are growing, increasing levels of dependency are also proving to be important drivers of business interruption. Supply chains are now highly complex and concentrated, with entire sectors reliant on a single or small number of specialist suppliers.

The scale of the challenge is particularly evident in the car manufacturing industry, where around 30,000 individual parts from thousands of suppliers are used to build a single car. A fire at a US magnesium plant in 2018, for example, disrupted operations at five car manufacturers – the parts were so specialised the affected firms did not have viable back-up options.  The automotive industry was the most disrupted sector in 2017, with the number of disruption events jumping by 30% in a year to nearly 1,700, according to a study by JLT.

Cyber is already emerging as a significant business interruption exposure. Business models are increasingly dependent on technology and data, which are exposed to cyber security, technical flaws and human error. Last year millions of mobile phone and banking customers were affected by a technical glitch at technology supplier Ericsson while customers at TSB Bank suffered months of service disruption after a flawed IT platform migration.

Malware infections have also emerged as a driver for business interruption – the 2017 NotPetya attack forced hundreds of companies, including the likes of Maersk and FedEx, to resort to manual processing. In March 2019, a cyber attack at aluminium manufacturer Norsk Hydro halted production of certain products for several weeks. Just a few months later, European aerospace firm Asco was hit by a ransomware attack, causing it to reportedly lose more than a week’s production.

As supply chains have become more important, some companies have significantly invested in risk management, supply chain management, business continuity planning and crisis management. Yet major business interruption incidents continue to happen with surprising regularity, and many organisations struggle to recover from a major event.

This is in part a reflection of increased connectivity and unpredictability. But it is also down to the maturity of risk management and business continuity. Too often, risk surveys carried out by insurers reveal serious shortcomings in how organisations approach business continuity. Some companies still do not have written business continuity plans, and where they are in place, they often are not up to date or tested.

The number of business interruption and supply chain incidents suggests that organisations need to do more to improve their overall business resilience. Business continuity planning is important, but wider business resilience, with its greater focus on risk management and what-if thinking, is needed if companies are to prosper in an increasingly unpredictable world.