Building Risk Resilience: Turning Awareness into Action

In their article in Risk Management Magazine, KPMG leaders Joey Gyengo and Prasanna Govindankutty highlight that building risk resilience involves more than just awareness; it also requires action 

Drawing from the 2025 KPMG Risk and Resiliency Survey, which surveyed over 200 C-suite leaders, they report a sharp disconnect between recognizing the need for resilience and the ability to act on it. While nearly half of respondents said their organizations have centralized risk structures, only 17% have resilience plans extending beyond critical processes. Even fewer, just 26%, reported strong cross-functional collaboration, and only 15% heavily rely on advanced analytics for risk oversight.

Gyengo and Govindankutty note that reactive risk management models, those tracking specific risks without broad visibility, are ill-suited to today’s complex, fast-moving threats. They argue that leadership buy-in and centralized frameworks are essential to make risk resilience a strategic priority. Integrating resilience directly into business strategy, they argue, enables organizations to adapt rapidly to disruptions while maintaining operational stability.

Risk resilience is an ongoing discipline, not a fixed achievement, requiring alignment across leadership, technology, and culture. The authors emphasize the role of technology, such as governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platforms and advanced analytics, in supporting risk resilience, though they note that only 11% of surveyed organizations have fully automated processes. Ultimately, they call for continuous improvement through enterprise risk management (ERM), cross-stakeholder engagement, and leveraging external data to enhance situational awareness.