Risk Management
Building resilience to extreme risks by applying best practice risk management
Introduction
The private sector has pioneered structures and approaches to mitigating and managing risk, leading to dramatic improvements in sectors such as aviation.
We work with policymakers on improving risk management governance and processes in the UK and internationally, showing how private sector best practice can be adapted and applied to enhance the way extreme risks are governed, identified, assessed, prevented, and mitigated.
Our current focus
- Developing a vision for resilience in the UK
- Enhancing the UK Government’s resilience structure
- Assessing chronic risks facing the UK
- Activating the OECD’s Framework on the Management of Emerging Critical Risks
- Applying risk governance to frontier AI developers
Featured Work
Risk Management
Transforming risk governance at frontier AI companies
This report explores how aspects of best practice risk governance – particularly the Three Lines Model (3LoD), which separates risk ownership, oversight and
How to turn the UK into ‘resilient Britain’
Overhauling central government and following the lead of big business will help us face complex risks.
Letter: Whitehall is ill-prepared for the risks Britain faces
Read our letter in The Financial Times
Response to the National Resilience Framework Implementation Update
On 4 December, the UK Government released its 2023 Implementation Update to the UK Government Resilience Framework, published in December last year. In our
What we want to see
- Make ‘Resilient Britain’ the focus of the next Integrated Review in the UK
- Introduce a Government Chief Risk Officer
- Introduce an independent, expert National Resilience Institute or Forum to review UK risk management
- Introduce central ownership coordination units in the UK for complex, cross-cutting risks
- Implement the ‘three lines’ model of risk governance at frontier AI developers
£4.12 million
Enhancements to the UK government’s resilience structure were estimated to cost just £4.12m annually in 2021
89%
of risk experts and global leaders perceive the short-term outlook to be volatile, fractured, or increasingly catastrophic
£376 billion
“The massive financial, economic and human cost of the Covid-19 pandemic is proof that, in the area of preparedness and resilience, money spent on systems for our protection is vital and will be vastly outweighed by the cost of not doing so” – UK Covid-19 Inquiry Module 1 Report, July 2024
Our future plans
Support the creation of a multilateral forum for managing extreme risks, along the lines of the 2023 AI Safety Summit
Ensure that the UK plays a global leadership role in resilience to extreme risks
