Governance key to corporate resilience: FM Global

Corporate governance has become a key factor in the risk profile of many countries, contributing to some of the biggest swings, both positive and negative, in the 2019 FM Global Resilience Index released Wednesday.

Norway again holds the top spot for overall resilience in the index, while Denmark rose from seventh to second place, boosted by an “impressive improvement” in its supply chain visibility, followed by Switzerland, FM Global said in the report.

Haiti is the bottom-ranked country in the report, followed by Venezuela and Nepal, unchanged from last year.

Corporate governance, reflecting the strength of a country’s auditing and accounting standards, conflict of interest regulation and shareholder governance was added as one of 12 economic, risk and supply chain-related factors driving this year’s index, the Johnston, Rhode Island-based mutual insurer said.

A 20-place drop in corporate governance resilience to 34th from 14th saw South Africa’s overall resilience fall eight places to 47th place from 39th in this year’s index, FM Global said in a statement.

By comparison, Rwanda’s corporate governance resilience jumped 50 places, to 29th from 79th, making it the biggest riser in this year’s overall resilience index, where it rose 35 places to 77th of 130 countries, FM Global said.

Thailand also rose by 16 places in the overall resilience index to 73rd place due to “significant improvement” in supply chain visibility and corporate governance, FM Global said in the report, though it cautioned that Thailand remains “heavily exposed” to extreme weather.

Singapore has the top spot in the new corporate governance category and is at 12th place in the overall resilience index, the report said.

The United States is ranked into three separate regions — Eastern, Central and Western — because of disparate exposures to natural hazards in the publicly available index, which ranks the resilience of 130 countries and territories based on economic, risk quality and supply chain metrics and reflects business risks such as cyberattacks, political upheaval, fire and hurricanes.

After another year of cyberattacks, several countries saw a strengthening in the inherent cyber risk category, including the United States, where cyber resilience rose nine places to 32nd.

Cyber resilience also improved in Germany, up 24 places to 54th, France up 12 places to 89th, and Australia rising 11 places to 62nd, FM Global said in the report.

The U.S. Eastern region placed 11th and the Western region at 22nd in the overall index, FM Global said.

The index is based on 12 equally weighted drivers of a country’s resilience that determine a country’s ranking.