Balancing risk appetite with growth
'Are we wading through treacle?’
In 2025, many of the leaders who joined our Forums described operating in a state of near‑constant disruption - with one even describing the situation as a 'perma-crisis'. It is clear that resilience now depends less on recovering from shocks and more on rolling with the punches and sustaining performance amid them. But how do you navigate continuous uncertainty, and still see positive growth on the bottom line?
‘We’re making decisions in environments where the baseline keeps shifting.’
Sector overview
If 2025 had a defining characteristic, it was the sense of operating in what many attendees described as a 'perma‑crisis.' Geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty, regulatory volatility, and technological disruption combined to create an environment where the baseline was constantly moving. Across our forums, we heard repeatedly that risk management frameworks were holding, but the organisational capacity to absorb continuous shocks was wearing thin. As one participant put it 'we’re making decisions in environments where the baseline keeps shifting.'
This reality has profound implications for risk culture and resilience. Traditional models of resilience - built around discrete events, recovery plans, and linear escalation - are no longer sufficient. Instead, organisations are being forced to adapt to chronic stress, prolonged ambiguity, and overlapping crises. In this context, resilience becomes less about bouncing back and more about sustaining performance under pressure. One attendee noted that 'resilience isn’t just about bouncing back. It’s about bending without breaking.'
A recurring theme in 2025 was the gap between documented risk culture and lived experience. Many firms have invested heavily in frameworks, policies and cultural statements, yet the practical application of these tools remains inconsistent. As one participant observed 'we’ve got frameworks, but we don’t have fluency.' A pretty hefty issue when you're working within such distinct parameters. Fluency is what enables teams to apply judgement in real time, to escalate concerns early and to challenge assumptions with confidence when information is incomplete.
It is this decision‑making under uncertainty that sparked another major concern. Boards and Executives alike described the difficulty of making strategic choices when the external environment is volatile and internal data is imperfect.
The risk of over‑correction - responding too quickly or too significantly to emerging threats - sits alongside the risk of not doing enough. The quality of decision‑making then becomes a cultural issue as much as a technical one ,putting team members, and by extension, customers, under pressure.
We also heard about the cumulative impact of operational bafflement. Many attendees described a sense of organisational drag, where processes, controls and governance structures - all designed to protect the firm - were inadvertently slowing it down. One participant neatly referred to this as 'wading through treacle'. This treacle effect is not about intentional inefficiency though. Instead, it sees organisations trying to manage operations through ever‑increasing layers of oversight, and instead of ending up with a set of clear rules, they instead find themselves tied up by an impossible-to-follow tangle of regulatory waffle, with each guideline weakened by it's knotty layering. The challenge for 2026 will be to unknot these ties, without weakening control.
Another insight that surfaced repeatedly was the worry around 'speak‑up' cultures. While most firms have good formal mechanisms in place for open conversation, at every level,, the willingness of individuals to raise concerns remains an issue. Fear of repercussions, being jaded from previous experience, or simply a perception that issues are not acted upon all contribute to frustrated silence. And silence is dangerous. Boards are encouraged to pay close attention to the non-spoken cultural signals - patterns of behaviour, informal feedback, and the tone of internal conversations - to gain a good understanding of how teams are coping with shifting sands.
‘Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back.
It’s about bending without breaking'.
Looking ahead
Looking ahead, we expect resilience to evolve from a compliance requirement to an agenda item. Firms that thrive will be those that embed resilience into decision‑making, resource allocation and cultural norms. This includes investing more heavily in scenario planning, strengthening cross‑functional collaboration and ensuring that risk insights are integrated into strategic discussions, early and often.
It also means recognising that resilience is as much about people as it is about systems. Fatigue, burnout and overload are very real risks that can undermine even the strongest frameworks. Having everything in place to support your systems is one thing, failing to support the people who manage those systems is a clear recipe for disaster.
A significant responsibility sits at Board level to model the behaviours they expect - curiosity, humility and a willingness to engage with tricky conversations and feedback.
Ultimately, risk culture and resilience are not static, risks evolve and as they do, the practices needed to tackle them changes. In a world where crises overlap (again and again!) and uncertainty is the norm, Boards must embrace adaptability, help model a culture of trust and make decisions with clarity (even when the path ahead is twisty and obscured).