Over the past year, we have shared a range of executive-level insights to support risk leaders navigating an increasingly complex and fast-changing operating environment. From geopolitical volatility and accelerating digitalisation to evolving regulatory expectations and growing interconnectivity, operational and non-financial risk teams are being asked to look further ahead, move faster and provide clearer strategic insight.
Throughout 2025, our work has been shaped by ongoing engagement with senior risk professionals across banking, insurance and asset management sectors as well as industry discussions at events such as RiskMinds. The insights we publish are grounded in peer data, practical experience and a shared focus on helping firms move beyond reactive risk management.
Below, we’ve brought together five free ORX resources from 2025. Together, they highlight how peer firms are responding to evolving operational and non-financial risk, giving risk teams practical reference points for discussion, planning and decision-making.
Five free ORX publications to catch up on
The ORX Operational Risk Horizon 2025
Executive summary
Emerging risks over the next 12–36 months
This report looks ahead to the operational and non-financial risks financial firms expect to face over the next 12-36 months, drawing on insight from 45+ banking and insurance firms across the ORX community.
Key themes in 2025 include:
- Geopolitics emerging as a driver across all risk categories, helping firms anticipate external pressures rather than react to them
- Cybercrime and new technology remaining the top emerging risks, supporting more informed prioritisation of technology and resilience investments
- Regulatory pressure continuing to shape risk agendas across firms
- An increasingly interconnected risk landscape, reinforcing the need for joined-up risk assessment and scenario planning
The free executive summary offers a clear, peer-led view of emerging risk drivers, helping risk teams reduce uncertainty, validate assumptions and focus attention where it matters most.
The ORX Reference Process and Service Library
Executive summary
A practical foundation for process, service and third-party oversight
This library is an industry-developed resource designed to help financial firms bring greater consistency and confidence to process, service and third-party risk management. It was created with McKinsey & Company as knowledge partners and shaped by insight from 50 global banks and insurers.
Built on over 60,000 data points, the library supports clearer benchmarking of internal frameworks and helps firms align process and service views across risk, governance and operational resilience.
The free executive summary shows how the library can help firms:
- Benchmark existing process and service taxonomies against industry practice
- Strengthen oversight of third-party risk and critical services
- Demonstrate completeness to regulators and internal governance teams
- Accelerate development or enhancement of internal libraries
- Improve alignment between process, service and organisational design
The executive summary provides a clear view of how firms are using a shared industry reference to reduce complexity, improve comparability and support more confident risk decisions.
The ORX Annual Loss Reports 2025
Executive summaries
Benchmark loss experience across banking and insurance
These reports provide a data-driven view of operational risk losses across the banking and insurance sectors, helping firms benchmark performance and validate risk priorities using credible peer data.
The free executive summaries draw on the ORX global loss databases, covering over one million loss events reported between 2019 and 2024.
Banking: Insight from 79 global banks, covering €640bn in gross losses
Insurance: Insight from 26 global insurers, covering €9.4bn in gross losses
The executive summaries help risk teams:
- Understand loss trends by year, region and business line
- Identify sector-wide patterns and emerging drivers
- Support internal reporting and decision-making with external benchmarks
- Compare recent loss experience with five-year historical trends
By grounding analysis in peer-reported data, the summaries help firms move beyond assumptions and support more confident, evidence-based discussions with senior management.
The ORX Cyber Roles and Responsibilities Study 2025
Executive summary
Clarifying ownership and oversight of cyber risk
This report examines how banks and insurers are structuring operating models to manage cyber risk more effectively, based on insight from 18 global firms.
Clear ownership of cyber risk remains a major challenge across the industry. The free executive summary provides a snapshot of how firms are defining roles, allocating responsibilities and responding to growing supervisory expectations.
The executive summary helps you:
- Benchmark cyber roles and responsibilities across the three lines of defence
- Understand how operating models and governance for cyber risk are evolving
- Identify common people, skills and resourcing challenges
- Assess the expanding role of second-line oversight and reporting
It also includes a practical checklist to help you review accountability, oversight and governance within your own organisation, supporting more informed discussions with internal stakeholders and supervisors.
Strategic Vision for Operational and Non-Financial Risk (2025)
White paper
Strategy, resilience and success
We published an updated version of our strategic vision for operational and non-financial risk in November 2025, reflecting how the discipline continues to evolve in response to increasing volatility, digitalisation and external change.
The update draws on ongoing discussions with senior risk leaders throughout the year and was a central theme at RiskMinds 2025, where firms shared how they are progressing towards more strategic and resilient approaches to ONFR management.
The free white paper explores:
- How firms are strengthening the link between ONFR, strategy and resilience
- The progress made over the past year, despite a more complex risk environment
- Six strategic priorities shaping the future of ONFR, including digital and AI, speed, communication and outside-in risk perspectives
- A clear pathway to success, setting out the practical steps firms are taking to build fit foundations, digital cores and new risk capabilities
The white paper provides a clear, industry-led view of where ONFR is heading, helping risk leaders reduce uncertainty, focus effort and align risk management more closely with strategic objectives.
Looking ahead
The full value of ORX sits beyond these free resources. ORX members and subscribers benefit from deeper benchmarking, richer data and ongoing peer exchange that support both day-to-day decision-making and longer-term strategic planning.
If you’d like to explore how we can support your risk management in 2026, book a free consultation with us. We’ll continue to publish new research, data and industry perspectives and we look forward to sharing what’s next.
