Switzerland overtakes Singapore as the country with the least overall risk
Pinkerton, a global provider of comprehensive risk management services, has launched its 2017 Risk Index Report, titled “A World Ranking of Business Risk,” which helps business leaders identify where, how and to what degree non-insurable risks exist in every country around the world. Pinkerton President Jack Zahran made the announcement. The 2017 edition of the Risk Index Report advances methodologies first introduced by Pinkerton in 2016. The updated version not only works with a larger data set, including information gathered from over 80 distinct proprietary and public data sources, but also analyzes and categorizes that data on a more granular level than the previous report. The data is then further refined and put into context by applying the standard definition of Risk Management—namely, Threat x Probability x Business Impact. These steps help more clearly identify and delineate the types of threats which have the potential to affect global business operations, allowing decision makers to evaluate and assess non-insurable risk on a holistic level.
“When Pinkerton introduced the Risk Index Report in 2016, it was a groundbreaking tool that comprehensively evaluated corporate risk and gave business leaders insights into the threats facing their organizations in a way that had never been done before,” said Zahran. “The 2017 edition builds upon that foundation and, when armed with this enhanced information, business leaders can craft even more precise risk management programs to protect their people, proprietary information and physical locations around the world from prevalent threats in the areas where they do business.”
As an example of the changing global risk landscape, Switzerland took over the top spot as the country with the least overall risk in 2017. The United States moved up five spots from last year to claim the second overall spot in 2017, and Denmark moved up one spot to third. Meanwhile, Singapore, which previously occupied the top spot in 2016, fell out of the top 10 altogether.
The Pinkerton Risk Index was developed over years of collaborative work between scholars and security professionals and contains input and insights from experts around the world. The report’s 80+ data sources include the Heritage Foundation, Insurance Information Institute, Center for Systemic Peace, United Nations, World Bank and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. Risk factors analyzed as part of the report include natural disasters, infectious disease, population health, violent crime, property crime, terrorism, economic structure, social and political institutions, societal upheaval, and information and technology.
For more in depth information about the Pinkerton Risk Index Report, how it was created and the mathematical formulas used to build out the rankings, please see the full 2017 Risk Index Report.