Building Capacity to Adapt and Respond to an Ever-Disrupted World
The last few years have been tough for New Zealand businesses, explains Angus McCullough, Head of Commercial Risk Solutions, Aon New Zealand.
From the pandemic and extreme weather events to supply chain strain, inflation and geopolitical instability, the hits have kept coming.
The growing scale and frequency of extreme weather events alone are testing national infrastructure, supply chains and emergency response systems, creating real operational pressure for businesses across the country. In Aon’s latest Climate and Catastrophe Insight report, New Zealand experienced three major extreme weather events in 2025 alone, resulting in around $120 million in insured losses.
Layer on recent fuel supply disruptions linked to geopolitical tensions, and the picture becomes clearer. Global events are translating into immediate, local consequences.
It’s tempting to treat each of these as isolated crises. Taken together, however, they point to something more fundamental: volatility is no longer a one-off. It is the baseline. Many traditional risk frameworks are struggling to keep up.
The question facing Kiwi businesses is no longer how to respond to the next disruption, but how to build resilience as a core, enduring capability.
Disruption: No longer cyclical, but constant
For decades, businesses operated on the assumption that disruption came in waves. A crisis would hit, recovery would follow and stability would return. That rhythm has broken down.
Today's disruptions are more frequent and they overlap. A severe weather event triggers supply chain delays, which compound inflation pressures, which arrive alongside a new geopolitical shock feeding through to freight or energy costs. There is no longer a clear ‘between crises’ period to reset. Businesses are operating in a state of continuous uncertainty, and resilience must be sustained rather than switched on when needed.
Interconnected risks
Risks that were once managed in silos are now deeply interconnected.
Climate events disrupt infrastructure and logistics, which flow through to supply chains, pricing and customer demand. Cyber incidents do not just affect systems. They trigger regulatory, reputational and financial consequences simultaneously.
This is forcing a rethink of how decisions are made. Business strategy and risk strategy can no longer sit apart. Resilience planning must move beyond static contingency plans to dynamic, enterprise-wide approaches that account for cascading impacts.
Perceived risk readiness vs. actual resilience
Many organisations believe they are well prepared. They have risk registers, insurance cover and continuity plans in place.
But real-world events are exposing a gap between perceived readiness and actual resilience. A persistent disconnect continues to exist between risk awareness and action, particularly as risks become more interconnected, fast-moving and harder to predict.
Plans designed for single, isolated events can quickly become overwhelmed when disruptions occur simultaneously or evolve rapidly.
In some cases, businesses only discover vulnerabilities in the moment. This can include over-reliance on a single supplier, limited visibility across operations or decision-making bottlenecks at critical times. Closing this gap demands regular stress testing, honest assessment and a willingness to challenge assumptions.
Permanent risk mindset
A permanent risk mindset means embedding resilience into how a business operates, not treating it as a standalone function.
In practice, this includes diversifying supply chains, investing in data and scenario modelling, and enabling faster, more informed decision-making under pressure. It also means aligning risk with strategy, so growth, investment and operational decisions are assessed through a resilience lens from the outset.
While businesses must strengthen their own resilience capabilities, long-term adaptation to volatility cannot sit with the private sector alone. Effective collaboration between businesses, insurers, local government and central government will be critical to improving risk resilience by enabling more coordinated responses to future disruptions.
For New Zealand organisations, resilience is no longer just about withstanding shocks. It is about building the capacity to adapt, respond and move with confidence in a world where disruption is constant.
Talk to Aon today to discover how we provide clarity to help you make confident decisions to prepare for uncertainty and thrive in a changing world.