ORX Scenarios reflects on the progress made with its community in 2024 and looks ahead to 2025, a year in which we are looking to offer more opportunities for collaboration with subscribers.
As a key outcome of our work with the community throughout 2024, ORX Scenarios set out six industry priorities for the future enhancement of operational risk scenario analysis in its 2024 White Paper and State of the Industry Report. These priorities were initially identified in the 2024 Scenario Process Benchmark Study and further discussed with the community at the 2024 Strategic Roundtable, providing the foundations for a solutions-focused programme of activity in 2025 and beyond.
For ORX Scenarios, the aim this year is to work with the community to deliver on these priorities across all three of the service’s core components:
- Data
- Practice
- Networking
Keep reading to learn more about what we have done over the past year and what we plan to do in 2025 to support our subscribers in enhancing their scenario data, processes and practices and develop more channels for collaboration and continual improvement.
Data
The backbone of the service is the ORX Scenario Library. The library grew significantly in 2024, with the number of scenarios rising by nearly 20% to just under 1300. The reports available in the Insight platform remain broadly unchanged in structure, except for the Portfolio Benchmark and Focus reports, which can now be filtered by ORX L2 risk type and Basel L2 risk type to allow for more granular benchmarking (subscribers looking for guidance on how to use these reports can sign up for a 1-1 or group training session here).
In 2025, following consultations with the community, we will be making a change to peer benchmarking in the List Report to enable more precise euro-value severity comparisons against scenarios submitted by peers of a similar size. Ongoing discussions with subscribers arising from the consultation process may lead to further changes, either in Insight or in reports outside the platform.
More broadly, following subscriber views reported in our recent annual feedback and priorities survey, we are working to make both short- and longer-term improvements to the structure of the library and its benchmarking capabilities ahead of migrating to the new Agora platform during 2026.
What to expect in 2025 – This phased approach to driving better scenario data inputs and outputs will involve several data activities:
- An expanding series of Scenario Analysis Workbooks: a key outcome of the growing library is that it has provided a basis for rolling out the workbook series more quickly. At the time of publication of this blog, the series includes 17 workbooks, with a further 25 scheduled for release this year. The aim is to have covered the majority of ORX Level 2 risks by end 2025. Updated versions of existing workbooks will also be released, and more library data points and other ORX data (e.g. ORX News) may be incorporated to further bolster the format.
- A new Scenario Landscape Report: the 2024 library also resulted in two landscape-type reports, the 2024 Scenario Library Highlights Report (a high-level data report) and the 2024 Insights into Material Risks Report (a trend report focused on change and thematic analysis). This year, the two reports will be merged to form a single Scenario Landscape Report containing a wider range of thematic analysis, visualisations and data insights leveraging cuts of library information not available to subscribers via Insight. The report is scheduled for release in Q3.
- A strategic project to redesign the Scenario Library: a Strategic Steering Committee consisting of volunteer subscribers will be set up to support the redesign of the library during H2. Planned improvements to the library include catering for specific scenario uses and enabling a greater range and depth of peer benchmarking.
Practice
In 2024, we continued with a number of established practice outputs, but we also experimented with new formats and initiatives. Among the former were the latest iteration of our Scenario Reference Handbook (now superseded by the 2025 iteration) and a new Scenario Development Handbook on AI risk scenarios.
The key process-related project of the year was the 2024 Scenario Process Benchmark Study on the end-to-end scenario process, which involved a new maturity matrix covering 22 process areas. Two of the study’s key outputs were Individual Benchmark Reports (comparing subscribers’ process maturity to nearly 90 other participating institutions) and the State of the Industry Report. The broader aim was to kickstart a new cycle of industry benchmarking designed to make it easier for subscribers to identify areas for development within their process.
Subscribers’ comments on our practice resources in the feedback survey point to three key themes:
- More in-depth process benchmarking: while the 2024 benchmark exercise was helpful in providing an external view of scenario programme maturity, subscribers are keen for the exercise to be replicated at more granular levels of the process.
- More topic-specific guidance: outputs on more in-depth process areas would be helpful alongside benchmarking, such as current uses (and use cases) of AI, automation and technology in scenario development and assessment.
- Greater focus on practice guidance: through both are needed, guidance on designing and implementing specific scenario process steps and scenario components is more valuable than broad industry trend analyses.
What to expect in 2025 – This year’s practice programme aims to build on these comments in two ways:
- The 2025 process benchmark will be more in-depth, more layered (with five levels of maturity per item rather than three) and narrower in scope, focusing on development and assessment only (with portfolio coverage and maintenance to be covered in 2026).
- There will be more focus on practical guidance and tools, with resources catering more for specific practical challenges – such as version one of a new Scenario Process Template scheduled for release in early 2025 and the initial phases of the development of a new trigger inventory and revised risk driver inventory in H2 2025.
Networking
Discussions with the community at the monthly Scenario Working Group sessions remained the service’s core networking activity in 2024, with 14 subscribing institutions tabling questions on 21 different process- and risk-related topics over the course of the year (all the materials and outcomes of the sessions are available here).
Our work with the community is increasingly focused on better understanding subscribers’ specific needs and their views on how the service can be continually improved – a shift initiated in our 2024 1-1 calls with subscribers and continuing into 2025. We know, from comments reported in the feedback survey, that subscribers want to see new discussion formats, including more opportunities for in-depth smaller-group discussions with peers. There is also appetite for returning to an in-person annual forum.
What to expect in 2025 – The service’s networking component will evolve in four main ways in 2025:
- In Q1 2025, we will be piloting a trial series of small-group discussions informed by subscriber-led priorities, with the potential to expand the offering after Q1. The focus of the trial series will be scenario planning and identification. The pilot quarterly series of insurance-specific SWGs launched in 2024 will also continue in 2025.
- The service will be holding two in-person forums in 2025, one in Europe (June) and another in North America (October).
- Subscriber steering committees will be introduced in H2 2025, providing opportunities to shape specific strategic and practical deliverables – including the redesign of the library ahead of the 2026 migration and work on the new trigger inventory.
- A new series of quarterly Community Insights Working Papers will be introduced this year to provide a mechanism for subscribers to feedback on recent discussions and shape next steps and deliverables.
Looking forward to 2025
We would like to thank all our subscribers for their contributions throughout 2024 and look forward to collaborating further with the community in 2025. A full annual programme of activity will be included in the February Scenario Working Group slide deck.
If you would like to find out more about the work of ORX Scenarios or get more involved in our community, we would love to hear from you!
