Global businesses are seeing the effects of increasingly frequent extreme weather, but many are missing opportunities to fully protect against it, according to a new report by commercial property insurer FM.
The 31-page report Ready for the Storm: Closing the Extreme Weather Resilience Gap published in September 2025 reveals that many companies are not fully adopting cost-effective opportunities to close resilience gaps.
While 95% of risk decision-makers at corporations believe they are fully or mostly aware of the extreme weather exposure of their business, only 67% of brokers believe the same of their clients, according to the report. The survey also found that 62% of risk decision-makers report they have suffered at least one severe disruption due to extreme weather in the past three years.
FM’s report included recommendations for businesses to close the resilience gap, including taking a long-term view of risk and evaluating supply chains.
In the report’s survey of 150 brokers and 800 risk decision-makers from industrial, manufacturing and technology companies: While 78% agree that changing weather systems render past assumptions about their exposure irrelevant, risk decision-makers on average believe their insurance would cover only half of their potential losses due to extreme weather.
Around 45% of risk decision-makers say the cost of insurance is too high to secure full coverage. The survey also asked respondents about the countries where they had their most business-critical operations. As an informal test, FM asked respondents to estimate what percentage of those countries' economic activity was exposed to wind or flood. About three quarters of corporate buyers underestimated the figure when compared to the FM Resilience Index.
FM chief science officer Dr Louis Gritzo said, “We found emerging gaps in awareness and mitigation at a time when many businesses face increasing pressure from their employees, investors and regulators to fully manage weather-related threats, both within and beyond their own operations. The good news? Organizations are starting to respond. They’re educating themselves on these changes and tracking and monitoring the weather to be better prepared. They’re implementing resilience measures to weather the storm, whatever form it might take.”