Boards of directors are strengthening oversight and taking a more integrated view of risk in response to technological disruption, changing labor markets, shifting regulatory landscapes and geopolitical uncertainty. WTW’s 2026 Global Directors’ and Officers’ Survey, conducted in collaboration with Reed Smith LLP, reports that directors increasingly are required to look beyond individual risks and assess how operational, technology, people, geopolitical and regulatory pressures may interact and amplify one another.
This year’s findings highlight the continued focus on operational and cyber risks, with health and safety remaining the leading concern, closely followed by data loss and cyberattack. The survey also reflects an increasingly complex external environment, with geopolitical risk entering the global top seven for the first time and supply chain disruption remaining a key concern in certain regions and sectors.
Health and safety risks
Health and safety remained the top risk for directors and officers for the third year in a row despite rising attention on newer, fast-changing risk categories. Over 80% of respondents at companies with revenues above $1 billion ranked health and safety as “very important” or “extremely important.” It ranked as the top risk in industrial, healthcare, energy and utilities, transportation and retail, and second in services.
Health and safety ranked first in Europe, the Pacific region and the Middle East, and third in Great Britain, Asia, North America and Latin America. The leading concern was physical health and safety in the workplace (40% of respondents), followed by workplace factors impacting mental health and wellbeing (26%), product and service issues affecting clients and third parties (20%), and personal factors impacting mental health and wellbeing (15%).
Cyber-related risks
Cyber and data risks continued to dominate the board agenda, reflecting persistent and systemic digital exposure amid AI adoption. For large companies, cyberattack, including cyber extorsion, was the top risk, and data loss ranked second highest. Data risk was the top risk in financial services and insurance, as well as services. It ranked second in healthcare, and energy and utilities, and third in industrial, and transportation and retail. Cyberattack ranked second in finance and insurance, industrial, and transportation and retail, and third in healthcare and services. These risks are particularly challenging for directors because they are persistent and increasingly intersect with AI adoption, third-party dependencies, operational resilience and geopolitical instability.
Geopolitical risks
Geopolitical risk entered the global top seven risks for the first time since the survey began, signaling heightened macroeconomic and political volatility. Its importance varies; it ranked highest in Europe and select sectors (industrial, transportation and retail) but is not yet a top-tier concern for the other regions or sectors, despite increasing in almost every region this year.
Supply chain disruption remained a key regional and sector risk, appearing in the top seven across North America, Africa and the Middle East, and in industries including industrial, healthcare, transportation and retail, as well as energy and utilities. Certain risks, such as climate change, are a top focus in some regions. For many boards, geopolitical risk is no longer only an external issue; it can cascade into supply chain disruption, regulatory complexity, cyber and data exposure and weaker performance.
Artificial intelligence (AI) risks
AI risk is rising sharply, reflecting accelerating adoption and concern. AI increasingly is embedded in core workflows and decisions, making board oversight an operational governance issue as much as a strategic one. Primary concerns include AI-generated errors and misinformation, followed by fraud/social engineering, failure to adopt AI strategically and weak governance or uncontrolled use. An important governance question is not whether AI is used but how and where the organization relies on AI outputs that could affect customers, regulatory exposure, operational resilience or strategy. Despite growing importance, board-level capability around AI remains limited, with relatively few respondents confident in oversight skills. AI ranks only mid-tier for time investment and lower for perceived materiality, indicating a potential governance gap.
According to the National Association for Corporate Directors (NACD) 2026 Governance Outlook Survey, 47% of directors believe that AI represents the trend with the greatest potential impact on organizational performance over the next 12 months. According to NACD’s 2025 Public Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey, more than 62% of directors set aside agenda time to discuss AI. NACD publishes a four-category AI governance model that includes strategic oversight, capital allocation, technology risk and technology competence.
Other risks
The WTW survey reports that systems and controls represent the fourth-highest risk, regulatory breaches fifth, and bribery and corruption sixth. Different regions also report an array of top seven risks, including Europe (criminal proceedings), Great Britain (failure to prevent corporate crimes; board structure, composition, independence, diversity), Asia (civil litigation and third-party claims), Latin America (insolvency, bankruptcy, financial distress of organization, as well as civil litigation and third-party claims), the Pacific (breach of human rights within or by business operations, as well as insolvency, bankruptcy, financial distress of organization) and Africa (regulatory breaches are the top risk; civil litigation and third-party claims are in the top seven).
The Middle East region reports a unique array of risks (anti-trust law/regulation is number two; failure to prevent corporate crimes ranks third; climate change is fourth and shareholder claims are seventh). For financial services, failure to prevent corporate crimes is a top seven risk. For healthcare, board structure, composition, independence and diversity represents a top risk. For services, civil litigation and third-party claims represent a top risk. For transportation and retail, it’s supplier risk. For energy and utilities, it’s bribery and corruption.
Skills and knowledge of the board
When asked about the extent to which participants agree that their fellow board directors have the necessary skills and knowledge to provide effective oversight of key topics, they identified financial performance and monitoring as the top material business risk for boards to review, followed by purpose and strategy development, and regulatory and compliance disclosure. The top-ranked area that participants said could require additional board attention is purpose and strategy development, followed by financial performance and monitoring, and innovation and transformation.
Enterprise risk management, capital investments and M&A, human capital (employee matters, culture, leadership development and succession) and AI are also areas where boards could benefit from spending more time. The governance challenge for AI is whether boards can translate awareness into decisions on oversight, investment, controls and resilience.
Given these factors, a central question in 2026 is what boards are doing differently to ensure that oversight keeps pace with a more connected and fast-moving risk environment.
A version of this article originally appeared on Forbes on June 15, 2026.
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