Strategic risk management has always been a top priority for finance leaders, but in looking forward to the risk landscape CFOs are facing in 2026, it’s “really defined by convergence,” Matt Stadler, president, Marsh McLennan Agency said.

Finance chiefs need to keep track of a number of complicated risk factors, including economic uncertainty, cybersecurity threats, and instability in the labor market — which interact with and inform each other. These and other looming risks “aren’t all happening independently, but I do think many CFOs work on each of those risks independently,” Stadler told CFO Dive in an interview.  

However, over the past few years, “volatility has really become more structural and not cyclical, so CFOs really need resilience built into their financial strategy,” he said. To do so, CFOs need to ensure they have the whole picture of their risk environment in front of them. 

Rolling risks forward   

Keeping that focus on building a financial roadmap that is resilient to risk is especially key in an environment where the risks businesses need to ward against just keep getting more complicated, and more intertwined.

For instance, a catastrophic or “CAT” event at an organization’s property can have ripple effects throughout the businesses’ operations or supply chains, while a cyber breach can lead to reputational and financial damage, not to mention regulatory costs. However, such events aren’t happening one at a time — rather, “they seem to cascade,” Stadler said. A property incident could potentially trigger a cyber breach, for example. 

“Do you have a true top-down view as to not just the risk on the whole organization, whether it's property, casualty, talent, [but to] what's the impact to your budget or your P&L?” he said. “Are you built with resiliency plans on who's going to call who, who has what authority levels? How will we make decisions in a crisis?”

Stadler joined the insurance and benefits provider over 13 years ago, and was appointed to his current role of president effective in January, according to his LinkedIn profile. Over the course of his more than two-decade tenure at the White Plains, New York-based business, he’s held roles including CEO and president of its Southwest region, and as president of employee benefits and EVP of sales.

To form the full picture, CFOs need to keep their organizations on a solid financial track, they need to craft a risk management plan that’s as fluid as the risks they’re facing — there needs to be “creativity ahead of time,” Stadler said.  “A real risk management strategy is taking your balance sheet and your business profile and rolling that forward to see what options you have.”

“It's not waiting for the next disruption,” he said. “It's building the capability and the capacity to absorb it, both within your team, from a strategy on how to handle it, as well as on your balance sheet.”

Preparation over prediction

For CFOs looking to build out a risk management strategy that will enable companies to respond to potential threats or changes as swiftly as they to, Stadler pointed back to an old mantra: “preparation beats prediction every time,” he said. Finance chiefs and their fellow business leaders may not be able to predict the next catastrophic event or cyber attack, but they can “prepare your company and your team for an incident” and how that incident may be handled, he said. 

Taking a cross-functional approach is one way for organizations to successfully prepare, he said. Many risk strategies “happen in pockets or vacuums,” leaving blind spots from team to team. Working with other C-suite leaders can help organizations form the 24-month, rolling risk forecast they need to keep pace with the rapid change of today’s business world.

Leadership also needs to work closely with their vendors or business partners when fleshing out a risk management strategy, as certain risks — such as cyber breaches or attacks — can often originate with third-parties.

A good “cross-functional risk council” would include leaders from finance, IT, legal and human resources, who should all be meeting “on a regular basis to discuss near misses, potential threats, what their execution plan is and what their risk profile really looks like in each of those departments,” Stadler said.  

Having a purposeful strategy meeting on the topic is about “providing clarity,” he said. “And clarity reduces financial damages.”