Risk in Focus 2025

As organisations rush to adopt new technologies to gain competitive advantage in a volatile and fast-moving risk landscape, an iron-clad focus on strategy, risk management and skills will be key to success. 

While Europe’s economy is expected to grow during 2025, its businesses face fierce headwinds powered by a mixture of political uncertainty, climate risk, regulatory pressure and changing demographic trends among the workforce. But the prevalent driver for 2025 is digital disruption. The newest generation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools have made competition and market demands a key strategic focus – and a huge risk. 

AI promises to drag Europe’s ailing productivity growth out of the doldrums, open new markets and boost profitability and competitiveness. But the challenges are steep. Few organisations have mature AI strategies backed up by solid governance processes – fewer still have a realistic roadmap for securing the talent needed to achieve that transformation. And with the increased cyber, data and reputation risk associated with AI, organisations have a delicate path to travel, balancing opportunity and threat at speed. Risk in Focus 2025 draws on a survey of 985 CAEs, 5 roundtable events with 48 participants and 11 one-to-one interviews to map the key challenges, organisational responses and internal audit’s remit over five hot topics: 

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