2025 has already tested resilience across the globe. In California, record-setting wildfires have left insurers facing billions in claims. A ransomware attack on a European hospital network forced emergency systems offline and triggered complex cyber liability payouts. Meanwhile, political unrest in South America disrupted supply chains and raised urgent questions about business interruption coverage.
These aren’t isolated headlines, but signals of a larger trend. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025, with insights from more than 900 experts worldwide, writes: “the next decade will be shaped by accelerating risks, from geopolitical tension to climate disasters, AI disruption, and societal polarization.”
For insurers, this shifting risk landscape is not an abstract problem, it’s the daily reality of underwriting policies, pricing coverage, and paying claims. For businesses and communities, it raises a fundamental question: not if these risks will hit, but whether they’ll have the right coverage, risk management strategies, and insurance professionals in place when they do.
What follows isn’t theory, but a practical perspective on how insurance leaders can prepare for geopolitical shocks, climate risk, and information integrity challenges, with strategies to build resilience where it matters most.
Managing Geopolitical Risks
Closed shipping lanes, cascading sanctions, and operational shutdowns don’t just disrupt supply chains. They trigger waves of insurance claims. For insurers, that means urgent client calls, spiking claim volumes, and the pressure to respond as fast as events unfold. Nearly six in ten senior executives now cite geopolitical tension as a top business risk, and the strain is visible in the numbers. Global insurance deal volume has fallen to its lowest level since 2009, while demand for political risk insurance surged 33% last year. Businesses aren’t waiting for stability. They are actively transferring risk.
Behind the statistics are real human pressures. When sanctions hit Russia, underwriters had just 48 hours to review thousands of policies for exposure while fielding nonstop calls from anxious clients. When supply chains collapsed in 2021, claims teams worked around the clock for months, coordinating across time zones and jurisdictions. When cyberattacks targeted critical infrastructure, carriers needed professionals who understood both cyber coverage and political violence exposure, often making real-time coverage decisions worth millions.
The challenge isn’t just operational complexity. It is expertise. Political risk underwriting requires a mix of legal acumen, regional insight, and risk modeling. Claims management requires professionals who grasp both policy nuances and geopolitical realities. Regulatory fragmentation is creating a patchwork of compliance requirements across regions, forcing carriers to strengthen oversight just to stay aligned.
Yet with more than 8,000 underwriting openings expected annually as experienced professionals retire or leave the field, insurers without quick access to specialized talent risk being overwhelmed when crises strike. Problems that only compound the impact of global disruption. With risks moving faster than hiring pipelines, the ability to deploy the right people at the right time isn’t just helpful, it’s what separates effective crisis response from costly delay.
Escalating Costs of Climate Change
Extreme weather events, wildfires, hurricanes, and biodiversity loss are no longer rare shocks. They are recurring stress tests that stretch insurance operations to breaking points. Higher property values magnify dollar losses. Shifting weather patterns turn once-in-a-century storms into seasonal realities. Population growth places more people and property directly in harm’s way.
The financial toll is staggering. The 2025 California wildfires are estimated to have caused $53 billion in economic losses, with approximately $40 billion covered by insurance. That makes them the most costly wildfire event in U.S. history. According to Swiss Re, insured losses from natural catastrophes reached $108 billion in 2023, while uninsured losses climbed to $174 billion. The result is a protection gap so wide that even robust carriers are struggling to keep pace.
But numbers only tell part of the story. Behind every headline are operational realities that push insurance teams to their limits.
When California’s fires erupted, catastrophe response units mobilized within hours, working 16-hour days for weeks while coordinating with adjusters across multiple counties. When Hurricane Helene made landfall, claims professionals processed thousands of total loss claims, distinguishing in real-time between wind, flood, and fire damage. Lloyd’s of London reported $2.3 billion in claims from that storm alone, while Travelers, Allstate, and Chubb each absorbed losses exceeding $1 billion.
The bigger question is, “What happens next?” Exiting risky markets reduces exposure today, but it also shifts pressure onto state-backed plans and tests the industry’s role in providing stability.
In Florida, Citizens Property Insurance now covers more than 1.3 million policies, a 400 percent increase since 2019, as private insurers retreat from hurricane-exposed areas. In California, major carriers have non-renewed more than 2.9 million homeowner policies since 2022, leaving 18 percent of ZIP codes with limited or no private market availability.
The state-run FAIR Plan now faces estimated losses of $4 billion, a strain that raises serious questions about sustainability. Closing the protection gap requires more than capital. It requires creativity, speed, and talent. Parametric triggers, community-level risk pools, and microinsurance are all gaining traction, but products alone are not enough.
The industry needs skilled catastrophe modelers, claims adjusters, and reinsurance specialists who can translate these tools into resilience for businesses and households. With crises moving faster than traditional hiring timelines, forward-looking staffing strategies are no longer optional. They are essential for carriers that want to remain competitive in this rapidly evolving market.
Wait... Is this AI?
The line between fact and fiction is disappearing faster than companies can adapt. Deepfake technology that once required Hollywood budgets now runs on smartphones, and the insurance fallout is staggering. In just the first quarter of 2025, deepfake-enabled fraud drove more than $200 million in losses, with 82% of fraud attempts involving some form of digital impersonation or manipulation.
It is not just the size of the problem, it is the speed. Imagine a video of a company's CEO making inflammatory statements going viral overnight. D&O claims teams might have only hours to determine whether it is legitimate reputational damage or a manufactured crisis designed to trigger coverage.
Or picture a stack of AI-generated documents attached to a property claim. Suddenly, adjusters are less like claims processors and more like digital detectives. UK investigators reported a 300% jump in manipulated photos and documents between 2021 and 2023, and the trend shows no signs of slowing.
A single deepfake or manipulated video can trigger financial losses, mislead customers, or even disrupt trading.
When coordinated disinformation campaigns unfold, they can spread false regulatory rumors, amplify operational disruptions, and create crises that move faster than companies can react.
Social media does not just spread misinformation, it accelerates it, turning isolated incidents into industry-wide emergencies. This creates an expertise gap that the industry cannot ignore.
Claims professionals need forensic skills they never expected to use. Underwriters must evaluate reputation risk in a world where truth can be digitally manufactured. Legal teams are interpreting coverage for scenarios that did not exist when policies were written, often while a crisis unfolds in real time on TikTok. With synthetic identity fraud alone driving $30 billion in life insurance losses, carriers cannot treat this as someone else’s problem.
Traditional hiring pipelines are not designed for this kind of threat. When a deepfake scandal erupts or a disinformation campaign spreads, companies need professionals who understand both the mechanics of digital manipulation and the insurance implications of manufactured damage.
Having that expertise ready is what turns coverage into action.
Building Resilience: A Path Ahead
In an unpredictable world, resilience comes from preparation and practical strategy. Organizations and communities that plan, invest in expertise, and anticipate emerging risks will navigate future shocks more effectively and recover faster.
Insurance is no longer just a safety net. It is a tool for managing uncertainty, helping businesses, communities, and individuals respond when crises strike. Geopolitical disruptions, climate impacts, and emerging technological threats are accelerating and interconnected. Meeting these challenges requires both innovative solutions and the skilled professionals who can put them into action.
Staffing catastrophe response teams, equipping underwriters with real-time intelligence, and preparing claims professionals for emerging risks are all critical steps in building operational resilience. Organizations that take these measures today will be able to act faster, adapt more effectively, and recover more fully when the unexpected occurs.
By understanding exposure, leveraging expertise, and integrating forward-looking strategies, companies and communities will not only withstand crises, they will be positioned to thrive despite them. Ultimately, the capacity to respond decisively to disruption will define success in the decade ahead. Organizations and individuals that anticipate, adapt, and invest in resilience will be better positioned to weather crises and seize opportunity in an unpredictable world.
