Hear from Moody’s Analytics’ Cris deRitis about cybersecurity, AI, deglobalization, regulatory risk, global debt problems, geopolitical volatility, supply-chain risk, and other key issues that will impact risk managers this year.

In 2024, the complex obstacles facing financial institutions and their risk managers were illuminated by headline-grabbing risk events – including the CrowdStrike IT outage, the fall of Republic First Bank, terrorist attacks on commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea, and a plethora of climate-change-abetted natural disasters.

Indeed, multi-faceted risks - ranging from rising cyber threats, third-party risks and AI encroachment to evolving regulatory and climate risks to geopolitical volatility and supply-chain uncertainty – created a very challenging environment.

Part of the problem is that many of the major risk types are interconnected and distributed across multiple transmission channels. For example, cybersecurity not only covers ransomware attacks and internal breaches but also requires monitoring of threats from both third-party vendors (like CrowdStrike) and from AI tools, like deepfake technology, used by cyber criminals. Likewise, geopolitical risks, such as the Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas wars, have a major impact on the supply chain. 

This year, risk managers can expect to face many of the same issues, while also tackling global debt problems, deglobalization, political upheaval, and even greater AI, cyber and third-party hazards.

Relevant Links:

Modeling Risk (GARP column by Cris deRitis)

GARP Benchmarking Initiative

GBI Study on Operational Resilience: Key Findings

Speaker’s Bio

Cristian deRitis is Managing Director and Deputy Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics. As the head of econometric model research and development, he specializes in the analysis of current and future economic conditions, scenario design, consumer credit markets and housing. In addition to his published research, Cristian is a co-host on the popular Inside Economics Podcast. He can be reached at cristian.deritis@moodys.com.