Top risks for Directors and Officers

The 2025 Global D&O Survey uncovers the key threats that directors and officers are most concerned about today—and how these risks are shifting across industries and regions.

Read our top seven risks article here.

Top seven risks to Directors and Officers

Q: How important are the following risks for the directors and officers of your organisation (whether financially or reputationally)?

Health and safety remains the number one risk globally, showing that last year's result wasn't an anomaly. Further information about health and safety risks can be found at chapter 4 page 6. Also interesting to see that systems and controls (a new risk last year) is still placing highly, while civil litigation has made its way into the top seven for the first time since the survey went global.

_{Angus Duncan
WTW}_{Global D&O Coverage Specialist (ex NA)}

Note: Ranked based on ‘very important’ or ‘extremely important’ for each risk. *Against your organisation. **Including threat of fines and penalties.

Top seven risks to Directors and Officers - by region

Q: How important are the following risks for the directors and officers of your organisation (whether financially or reputationally)?

While health and safety has remained overall number one risk for directors and officers, it has gone down in a number of regions: Asia, North America and the Middle East.

Note also that climate change is no longer in the top seven for any of these regions.

By contrast diversity, equity and inclusion, a new risk in this survey, has made its way into the top seven for GB, North America and Africa.

^{Angus Duncan
WTW Global D&O Coverage Specialist (ex NA)}

Note: Ranked based on ‘very important’ or ‘extremely important’ for each risk. *Against your organisation. **Including threat of fines and penalties.

Top seven risks to Directors and Officers - by industry

Q: How important are the following risks for the directors and officers of your organisation (whether financially or reputationally)?

Health and safety has fallen down the priorities in the services sector, but remains number one in all other sectors except finance and insurance. However, even that position could be misleading. While not obvious from this chart, we can also see from the underlying data that within the finance and insurance sector, asset managers rank health and safety as their number three risk, compared to insurance, where the risk is languishing down in the bottom quartile.

_{Angus Duncan
WTW}_{Global D&O Coverage Specialist (ex NA)}

Note: Ranked based on ‘very important’ or ‘extremely important’ for each risk. *Against your organisation. **Including threat of fines and penalties.

Top seven risks to Directors and Officers - by industry

Q: How important are the following risks for the directors and officers of your organisation (whether financially or reputationally)?

Here we can see a similar picture to last year, with health and safety being highest ranked in companies below $5bn in revenue. For the largest companies, health and safety has fallen from the number two risk down to number five. Of course, that is still a high rank overall, given that the survey asked respondents to consider 30 risks.

_{Angus Duncan
WTW Global D&O Coverage Specialist (ex NA)}

Note: Ranked based on ‘very important’ or ‘extremely important’ for each risk. *Against your organisation. **Including threat of fines and penalties.

Health and safety

Q: Which of these health and safety risks do you consider to be the most important?

Note: Ranked based on ‘very important’ or ‘extremely important’ for each risk. *Against your organisation. **Including threat of fines and penalties.

Time spent on the board –
Topics ranked within top three

Q: In terms of time spent on the board, please rank the top five topics (a) currently discussed at your average board meeting (b) where you feel more time needs to be spent; and (c) which you consider the most material to the business.

Skills and knowledge present at Boards of Directors

Q: To what extent do you agree that your fellow board directors have the necessary skills and knowledge to provide effective oversight of each of the below areas?

Interesting to see AI still being ranked so low - in terms of skills and knowledge of the board, where more time is needed and materiality to the business. This is fairly consistent with how AI is ranked as a risk for directors as well where it appears in the bottom half of risks. However, perhaps a surprising result that more people don't consider AI to be a material risk to the business or something they should be spending more time on.

^{Angus Duncan
Global D&O Coverage Specialist (ex NA)}

Note: Percentages indicate ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’.

Skills and knowledge present at Boards of Directors: Commentary