Assurance functions face a more difficult landscape that ever before, and the recent coronavirus outbreak shows us exactly why there’s a need for insight into risk at the front and midline. Part of Assurance’s role will be giving good advice on the right risks to take to grow but another part of managing the burden will be equipping the wider business to own and manage risks effectively itself.

Our survey on employee risk ownership shows considerable benefits for those organizations that have successfully empowered the business to take control of risks better. For example, the likelihood of acting on observed risk jumps 32 percentage points, the likelihood of reporting an identified risk jumps 19 percentage points, and the employee confidence in owning risks increases 57 percentage points.