Live discussion : What’s on the European Agenda for a digital and green recovery?

The EU recovery plan is geared towards transforming the European economy and emerging stronger and more resilient the other side of the pandemic. Crucial to the recovery plan is the ambition to make Europe greener and more digital. The EU has adopted an ambitions package of measures to help improve the flow of money towards sustainable and digital activities across the EU. On the ‘green’ side, all that’s related to carbon-neutral targets by 2050, as well as the reorientation of capital flows to green assets are vast undertakings. On the digital side, there is a swathe of activity around artificial intelligence, as well as ‘opening up’ the industrial sector with common data spaces.  

What does resilience mean to Philippe Cotelle, Head of Cyber Insurance, Head of Insurance Risk Management, Airbus Defence & Space ?

What does resilience mean to Laurence Eeckman, Vice President Risk Management, Electrolux Group ?

Identification of an organization’s key risks is crucial and need to be continuously performed as risks evolute with the organization’s goals and strategy. However, we see with the last and current events that velocity and impact of negative events have increased, and many of these threats are inevitable. Organizations therefore need to be even more resilient: it is no longer enough to plan for avoiding a risk. Companies need to focus on mitigation deals with the aftermath of a disaster and the steps that can be taken prior to the event.

Another aspect is the way companies are organized around risk and resilience. As much as risk management has often been centralized, resilience must be embedded at all levels of the organization. The pandemic and its consequences have accelerated the need to build resilience in all functions.

How do you deal with disruption?

Agility has always been one of the Group’s strengths. However, we’re now implementing a structured Business Continuity Management to be able to find better alternatives quicker.

We are also accelerating the transformation of the company, with the aim to simplify our supply chain and operations, and at the same time build a robust and agile sustainable supply chain which is consumer driven and digitally integrated.

Our company focuses on delivering excellent service to our consumers despite disruptions with the support of real-time information on deliveries and services – visibility on components and products allows us to proactively manage our service to our consumers and customers. We therefore need to speed up the digitalization of our systems and operations. Advanced analytics will also help us make better and faster decisions and proactively plan out different scenarios.

You will be taking part in the panel “What is on the European Agenda for a digital and green recovery”, what would you like the audience to remember after your session ?

The pandemic increased the need to accelerate digitalization. Many opportunities result from this: from better products, more efficient operations but also a new approach to work leading to a work-life balance which has never been reached at this scale before. With the opportunities come also risks, like cyber risks. European legislation will continue to develop to protect consumers and data privacy.

From a sustainability strategy to a sustainable strategy, embedded in the business. This is the other great priority which is on every company’s agenda: it is a social responsibility for all companies, their employees, and everyone to become more sustainable.

More than ever, Risk Managers need to support their organization by being part of the conversation at an early stage, and support creating the scenarios adapted to the company’s strategy to correctly prioritize resources.

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