Academy Workshop: Why Supply Chain Risk Is So Hard to Insure, and What Risk Managers Can Do About It

Supply chain disruption now sits high on most risk registers, yet many organisations struggle to translate that concern into effective risk transfer. This session explores why supply chain risk remains so difficult to insure, even as awareness and investment in resilience continue to grow.

Drawing on recent global research and practical experience from the insurance market, the session looks at the structural mismatch between today’s supply chain risks and the way insurance products have historically been designed. Many of the most material disruptions, from cyber incidents and regulatory action to port closures, reputational cascades, and non damage events, do not align neatly with traditional property damage based contingent business interruption triggers. The result is a persistent gap between what organisations believe they are protected against and what insurance can realistically respond to.

Rather than framing this as a failure of insurance, the session positions it as an alignment challenge between risk identification, operational resilience and risk financing. It will help risk managers understand where insurability constraints genuinely sit, how markets are evolving, and how to have more productive conversations about what insurance can,  and cannot, do in the context of modern supply chains.

The aim is to equip risk managers with a clearer mental model for supply chain insurability, enabling better informed decisions on risk prioritisation, programme design and engagement with insurers.
 

Speaker:

 Simon Sølvsten, Head of Organizational Resilience Research Hub, WTW