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Hong Kong has emerged as the most resilient market in Asia and 19th globally, according to a global insurer’s study, overtaking other Asian frontrunners such as Japan and Singapore.
The 2018 FM Global Resilience Index ranked 130 countries and territories all over the world in terms of resilience of their business environments in 12 areas, including political risk, inherent cyber risk, natural hazards, urbanisation, and corruption control.
The top three worldwide spots for overall resilience were occupied by Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Sweden. In Asia, Hong Kong was first, followed by Japan (24th globally) and Singapore (28th globally).
The rankings of Malaysia (40th), South Korea (44th), and Thailand (97th) remained relatively the same as last year’s.
FM Global defined inherent cyber risk as: “vulnerability to a cyber attack combined equally with the country’s ability to recover; captured by internet penetration (the percentage of individuals in a country who have access to the internet) and civil liberties.”
Taiwan was one of the most improved markets in terms of cyber risk, leaping from the 107th spot to the 50th in a year, partly due to increased civil liberties. Hong Kong also made significant improvements, from 103th to 69th. Meanwhile, the Philippines has become less resilient to cyber risks, dropping from 32nd place to 66th.
“Different nations have different levels of inherent cyber risks, as these examples show,” said David Johnson, FM Global’s vice president and regional manager of Asia operations.
“Understanding such geographic disparities and what can threaten one’s business can help improve strategic decisions when it comes to business resilience.”
Johnson continued: “The Resilience Index provides business executives powerful global intelligence to aid their strategic decisions when it comes to siting facilities, selecting partners and determining the most effective ways to manage risk. Globally connected Singapore-headquartered business can use the index to dig deeper than they ever have into geographical differences in resilience, including cyber risk.”
