Resilience Now Depends on Speed Not Prediction

The future of resilience may have less to do with predicting crises and more to do with responding effectively when they arrive.

That is the view of Keith Davies, Group Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Admiral PLC, who believes organizations have become significantly more resilient following years of disruption that included the pandemic, geopolitical shocks, cyber incidents, and economic uncertainty.

“If you asked us five, six years ago, could we survive COVID, Ukraine, as well as we have, I think we’d have said no,” Davies said. Organizations have learned valuable lessons about resilience, adaptation, and crisis management.

The challenge today, however, is different. Risks are becoming faster, more interconnected, and more difficult to identify.

Davies highlighted three defining characteristics of modern disruption: speed, interconnectedness, and opacity.

Events now unfold in real time, impacts spread rapidly across organizations, and warning signals increasingly emerge through unconventional channels such as social media rather than traditional reporting mechanisms.

“You’ve gone from enduring and surviving risk to actually now being able… about understanding and making decisions at speed,” he explained.

He also warned that governments may be less able to support organizations during future crises than they were during previous shocks.

Energy subsidies, pandemic support programs, and extraordinary interventions may not be available to the same extent in future events. As a result, internal resilience capabilities will become increasingly important.

One of Davies’ key themes is that resilience should be viewed as an ecosystem challenge. Organizations are dependent on increasingly complex networks of suppliers, technology providers, infrastructure operators, and global supply chains.

“You’re actually really only as strong as your weakest link,” he said. Understanding resilience therefore requires looking beyond direct suppliers to understand broader value chains and dependencies.