Lisa Kalscheur explores why risk leaders are increasingly challenged not by a lack of data, but by the ability to identify and act on meaningful signals quickly enough. Drawing on insights from Risk Evolve London, the article examines how interconnected r
During the Non-Financial Risk (NFR), Operational Risk
and Resilience track at CefPro Risk Evolve London 2026, one theme surfaced
consistently across every session:
Financial institutions are not short on data.
The bigger challenge is identifying,
interpreting,and acting on the right signals in time. Increasingly, it’s not
just about reacting to signals - it’s about knowing what you’re missing in the first
place: uncovering the “unknown unknowns.”
Across discussions on AI, cyber resilience,
third-party risk, operational risk, RCSA, and culture, a clear picture emerged.
The industry is drowning in data, but struggling to identify the right signal -
or sometimes the lack of signal - early enough to get ahead of risk.
This is the problem of decision latency: the gap
between identifying what matters and acting on it. It is rapidly becoming one
of the defining challenges for today’s CROs.
This is also where the concept of “decisioning” is
emerging – not decision-making as a point-in-time activity, but a continuous
capability to detect, interpret, and act on signals in real time.
One message came through clearly across the
conference: risk has become exponentially more interconnected, complex, and
fastmoving.
Cyber risk, operational risk, geopolitical
instability, third-party exposure, AI adoption, and reputational threats no
longer exist in isolation. Risks now compound across domains, often faster than
organizations can respond.
As Dr. Suren Pakhchanyan, Chief Risk Officer at
Inecobank, noted in his keynote, risk teams are now dealing with “thousands of
risk events every month,” much of it buried in unstructured data. More
critically, many risks sit beyond the reach of observable data altogether –
blind spots across fourth- and fifth-party dependencies, or situations where
the absence of signal is itself meaningful.
These blind spots fundamentally change how risk must
be understood - where silence is no longer comfort, but ambiguity.
In response, firms are increasingly turning to AI to
help surface what traditional approaches miss. Multiple panelists discussed how
AI is beginning to transform risk
management through anomaly detection, cyber
monitoring, and continuous analysis of unstructured data.
Chhavi Kakkar of NatWest emphasized that agentic AI
must work within the pace and realities of the first line to become truly
valuable for RCSAs and operational risk workflows.
Pakhchanyan also shared an example where AI improved
risk categorization accuracy from 67% to 92% while cutting reporting time in
half. But the real opportunity is not simply faster reporting. It is faster,
more confident decisioning – especially in environments where signals are incomplete
or fragmented.
The conference also highlighted how quickly risks
now amplify across domains. Discussions featuring Nassos Economopoulos
(Rothesay), Fraser Hughes (NatWest), and Mihaela Breg (Europe Arab Bank)
highlighted how cyber, operational, geopolitical, and third-party risks are
increasingly converging.
