Companies should learn from Egypt, risk experts say

Marsh and Aon have called on companies to reassess their risk management strategies, following a week of political unrest in Egypt.

Head of Aon’s Crisis Consulting team, Justin Priestley, added: “Situations like this can blow up very quickly – and in places that have traditionally been considered ‘safe’. Organisations need to have robust travel risk management and incident response mechanisms to ensure that they are doing everything possible to protect their employees and keep them informed.”

Marsh’s head of political risk, Evan Freely, said: “These incidents in Egypt should cause every company with operations in emerging markets to re-evaluate the adequacy of their risk management strategies."

JLT’s head of credit and political risk analysis, Elizabeth Stephens, said that while disturbance-related property damage losses were unlikely to be huge, she was concerned about the effect of long-term unrest in Egypt.

“If it continues, rates will be pushed up hugely for Egypt, which we are starting to see already. A lot of underwriters will probably decide that they are closed for business in Egypt,” Stephens said.