Six month recap
H1 2025 Top Takeaways
A summary of the key operational and non-financial risk insights from our work in the first half of 2025
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ORX Membership
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Takeaways - July 2025
This article summarises the highlights from ORX Membership activities in the first half of 2025, including published reports, community discussions and our events. It provides our members and ORX Lite subscribers with operational and non-financial risk insights from across our work.
A vision for the future of operational and non-financial risk management
Last year, we published our vision for operational and non-financial risk (ONFR). Based on interviews with 50 senior risk leaders, this charted a path forward for the discipline. This pathway is designed to position risk teams as an enabling function, supporting their businesses to ‘manage ONFR confidently and dynamically, balancing risk and reward to mitigate loss, protect customers and reputation, deliver change and achieve their strategic objectives’.
When we published the vision, we made a commitment to our community to work together to help deliver the path forward. As a result, many of our membership activities in H1 2025 have been designed to support priority areas.
Risk leaders are already taking steps towards making the vision a reality, and a common path forward is starting to emerge.
Laying foundations fit for the future
First, leaders are creating foundations that are fit for purpose, which are an essential precursor to digitalisation:
Governance
Coordinate activity across a growing set of 2LOD functions to develop single ONFR view.
Culture
Develop positive risk culture, balancing risk and reward.
Skills
Upskill team by adding digital & business skills to existing risk base
Framework & tools
Balance simplicity with flexibility and consistency. Find sweet spot where frameworks & tools are easy to use but are robust enough to manage risk appropriately
Digital core
Then they are building a new digital core for risk to match the digitalisation taking place in the business, embedding data-driven risk management of core business at speed and at scale
New capabilities and insights
And finally, they are creating new risk capabilities and new risk insights:
Outside in
Expand the scope of data collected from ecosystem and environment.
Change
Increase resources and capabilities in change management.
Emerging risk
Improve sight of emerging risks and ability to respond rapidly.
See the whole
Have a balanced prioritisation based on whole impact, particularly reputation.
Connect the dots
Break down the barriers and develop a single view of risk to the business.
Download the full report for free to learn more about the pathway to success and to discover ORX's vision for the future of ONFR.
Read on for a summary of all our H1 activities. This article rounds up the work completed so far around the three core components of the ONFR pathway – insights and capabilities, digital core and fit foundation. Topics covered include geopolitics, third party, governance, skills, loss data and emerging risks and technologies. As well as the key takeaways from the reports and discussions, you can also find links to the full outputs if you'd like to read about them in more detail.
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This article is available to all ORX members and ORX Lite subscribers
If your firm is a member of ORX or an ORX Lite subscriber, log in or create an account to access the article.
Not a member or subscriber? Talk to us today to discuss how you could join the ORX community.
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What's on the agenda in H2 2025
If you would like more information on any of the topics above, please get in touch. As we move into the second half of 2025, we will continue to develop thinking and practice on these topics and more.
We'll publish another six-month summary towards the end of December. So, if you have any feedback on this article, we'd like to hear from you.
Plans for H2 2025 include
- LeadersConnect virtual discussions
- Insurance-focused discussions
- Top Risk Review H2 2025
- Operational Risk Horizon 2026 (survey)
- Third party practice papers
- Risk assessment project
- CCAR risk handbook pilot
- Data Science Thought Leadership
- Working group discussions
- Autumn Forums
- Cyber Third Party Study
- Cyber training materials
- Cyber Year in Review
- Cyber North American Forum
- Scenario Library publication/trend reports
- Scenario Development & Assessment Benchmark
- Scenario Landscape Report
- Scenario Analysis Workbooks
- ORX Scenarios North America Forum
- News summaries
- Thematic deep dives
- Live data explorer
- Editorial reports and analysis
- Top Risk Review H2 2025
- Operational Risk Horizon 2026 (survey)
- H2 2025 Top Takeaways
Disclaimer: ORX has prepared this resource with care and attention. ORX does not accept responsibility for any errors or omissions. ORX does not warrant the accuracy of the advice, statement or recommendations in this resource. ORX shall not be liable for any loss, expense, damage or claim arising from this resource. The content of this resource does not itself constitute a contractual agreement, and ORX accepts no obligation associated with this resource except as expressly agreed in writing. ©ORX 2025
Contacts:

Steve Bishop
Research and Information Director, ORX

Roland Kennett
Client Success Director, ORX

Helen L’Abbate
Deputy Director - Research & Information, ORX