What’s keeping executives up at night?

Reputational damage is the biggest concern of business executives in financial services and other industries followed by business model, economic trends and competition, according to a global survey by Deloitte.

The results of the 2013 Deloitte/Forbes Insights Global Strategic Risk Survey vary significantly from three years ago, when reputational risk was ranked third behind brand damage and economic trends.

According to Deloitte Risk Services managing partner Harvey Christophers, the need to protect a company’s reputation was increasingly important due to the onslaught of social media, which was seen as the biggest technology disrupter to reputation.

Nearly half of respondents globally identified social media as the transforming reputation management, above technologies such as analytics, mobile applications and cyber-attacks.

“The speed of social media and the potential loss of control that accompanies it were primary concerns,” Christophers said.

“Damaging news spreads like the speed of light, it reaches a much wider audience easily, and it stays on record digitally for longer. It also questions whether traditional approaches to media response are valid in this new world. Even in an environment where economic conditions remain tough and technology threatens business models, companies are placing reputation at the top of their strategic risk agenda.”

The survey, which included more than 300 respondents across the five sectors of consumer/industrials, healthcare, technology, resources and financial services, found 94 per cent of companies have changed their approach to risk management in the past three years.

Over 53 per cent of respondents believed technology enablers and disrupters such as social media, mobile and big data could threaten their established business models with 91 per cent of companies changing their business strategies since those technologies emerged.

Locally, 98 per cent of respondents in Australia and the Asia Pacific said they had changed their business models.

To improve both their strategic risk management capabilities and performance, companies have increased executive staffing assigned to managed strategic risks (38 per cent) as well as the frequency (43 per cent) and the budget for monitoring and managing strategic risks (52 per cent).