Many would argue the world is in the most volatile risk environment in modern history. Some have dubbed it a permacrisis. “However,” notes Nick Robson, who leads Marsh’s Credit Specialties Practice and manages our political risk solutions, “when you dig underneath the data what you find is that some of the risks are moderated or to some degree reduced by other positive trends.”

In a conversation with Chief Public Affairs Officer Erick Gustafson, Robson takes us on a survey of the critical issues facing humanity, namely the effects of the war in Ukraine, tensions with China and the threat of a global recession.

He sees major demand drivers as a stimulant for economic growth, fostering positive economic and political movement. The challenge is how to mobilize capital to meet demand in a volatile and complex risk environment.

“What we now need to do,” says Robson, “is work with insurers to drive some innovation in how risk is underwritten, and to deploy more capital to the right risks, efficiently, to support the investment and trade requirements of the world.”

We are witnessing the beginning of another information technology transformation. The infrastructure of the metaverse, though nascent, is in place: cryptocurrency, blockchain, 5G, immersive technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality and other elements of this next wave are here. The metaverse has the potential to further transform just about every aspect of human life, just as radio did a century ago, television 50 years ago and the rise of the internet 25 years ago, perhaps even more so. Why?

Because it brings with it the promise previous media technologies did not, namely, broader decentralization and the empowerment of the individual.

But it’s not without its risks, according to Ben Hoster, Director of Transformative Technologies at Marsh McLennan. “I don’t like to think of myself as a technology evangelist,” he said. “I’m more of a technology realist.” It’s a world he describes as a new era in how humans will socialize, learn, entertain and conduct business.

In Episode 5 of our This Moment Matters podcast series, hosted by Marsh McLennan Chief Public Affairs Officer Erick Gustafson, Hoster provides a candid assessment from a business perspective about the realities and risks of the metaverse.

Disaster recovery needs to be rethought. It needs to shift to the concept of disaster resilience. Daniel Kaniewski, former Deputy Administrator for Resilience at FEMA, describes resilience as taking action before a disaster occurs, to reduce impacts on individuals, communities, governments and society writ large. However, he says far too many people only realize the value of resilience after a disaster strikes and they have lost everything.

In Episode 4 of our This Moment Matters podcast series, hosted by Marsh McLennan Chief Public Affairs Officer Erick Gustafson, Kaniewski talks about why thinking and acting in terms of resilience is critical, especially as the effects of climate change bring more intense storms as well as greater wildfire threats. Currently, he’s Managing Director of Public Sector at Marsh McLennan where he continues to focus on disaster resilience.

Kaniewski is hardly an armchair expert. He began his career at 18 as a volunteer firefighter paramedic in northern Minnesota. “You had to learn fast not only to care for those in need, but to realize you have to be resilient yourself because you see some pretty tragic circumstances,” he said.

One of his insights is that disaster response, whether from FEMA or other agencies, is only meant to help get people out of harm’s way. “With more disasters comes a greater burden on responders to help disaster survivors in their time of need,” he said. Kaniewski suggested resilience as the solution: “We need to prioritize resilience actions to improve survivor outcomes.”

By embracing disaster resilience, we can ensure disasters have fewer impacts in the future.

There are many parts of the solution to climate change from scientific research to each person’s daily lifestyle choices. Perhaps the most critical piece is getting the world’s industries to make carbon neutral or negative products, and to cut emissions in the manufacturing process. Some companies will do this voluntarily, but widespread compliance must come from the demands of investors requiring companies to lower emissions in order to secure capital.

“If I’m the steel industry… very high emissions, I recognize that that’s under pressure,” said Simon Cooper, who leads climate and sustainability initiatives at Oliver Wyman, “Things will need to change, and I’m going to need investment to either buy new arc furnaces or to invest in negative emissions technologies. And that money has to come from somewhere. That comes from finance.”

In this episode, a moving interview with Cooper who lays out a clear and compelling vision for an aggressive action to meet the UN’s sustainability goals to lower C02 output and mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

Cybercrime has become a sophisticated enterprise. Hacking tools built on the latest technologies such as AI or hybrid cloud are available on the black market, where stolen data is also bought and sold. And digital tools used in cinema have become cheap and available. This kind of software is also in the hands of hackers who deploy them to fool users into clicking on unsecure links. “They’re able to manipulate, of course, letters and signatures and other corporate data, as well as now voices and of course images,” says Stephen Viña, senior vice president of Marsh’s Cyber Practice. “They’re really able to fabricate a whole story out of thin air, just to get you to click on a link, to authorize a payment, to move money around.”

There was a time in the early days of the internet that users assumed technologists would simply develop cyber security software that relieved the user from having to think about it. Today, we are further than ever from that notion. All it takes to bring a company to its knees is one person in the organization clicking on an unsecure link. In this episode, a conversation with Stephen Viña about the ever-changing risks of digital crime, from hacking to ransomware.

There was a shortage of health care workers before COVID. Now that the dwindling labor pool is a top news headline, the realization has set in – which medical professionals were trying to communicate from the beginning of the pandemic – that one of COVID’s worst effects is that it overwhelms medical systems and challenges short-staffed hospitals to provide care for other diseases and ailments.

“Even if Omicron is mild, it will create a large denominator of cases, some number of which will need to be hospitalized,” says Gigi Norris, Managing Director at Marsh where she leads the US healthcare practice. “That’s happening at the same time as other COVID cases and influenza, which always creates an uptick in hospitals in the wintertime. There is a potential deluge of patients.”

In the podcast Norris brings her expertise in public health and pandemics to describe the unfolding of events of a disease with many unknowns, the issues around information and communication, and the effects on the critical labor force needed to treat millions of patients.