Insights & Impacts

While the fires may have eased, the impact to Australia’s business community is significant. The economic damage from the bushfires devastating Australia’s eastern seaboard alone is likely to exceed the record $4.4bn set by 2009’s Black Saturday blazes, Moody’s Analytics has said. With summer not yet over, the bushfire threat unfortunately continues meaning everyone must remain vigilant and take steps to ensure that they mitigate the risk.

While there’s not much point stressing over what we can’t control, it is our responsibility to move forward with our eyes wide open. That’s what I always kept in mind when I spent five years helping FM Global to develop its Resilience Index.

Cyber-crime tactics and targets are becoming ever more sophisticated and wide-ranging. Motives increasingly go beyond financial gain to disrupting or destroying important data and national infrastructure.

Stock prices of companies affected by hurricanes take a 5% hit, according to independent analysis commissioned by FM Global.

Watch this 3-minute video by FM Global, "Preparing for Windstorms" and ensure your team has these important steps covered at all your facilities.

If any of your locations are in the path of any forecasted hurricane-force winds or heavy rain, follow your emergency plan and be sure to take these steps, if they can be done safely, to help mitigate damage.

A recent report from the New South Wales Resources Regulator reveals that mobile plant fires in the state have risen in the past decade.

Watch the video from inside the FM Global Research Campus.

If we have one job as CFOs, it's protecting the value of our companies. One of the most insidious threats to corporate value is sudden disruption from events like fire, hurricane, flood, earthquake or cyber attack—disruption that is ostensibly insured. We tend to be vaguely aware of this risk, but rarely do we put numbers to it.