US chief financial officers (CFOs) believe their companies are insufficiently resilient against operational risk, a survey by FM Global has found. A majority of respondents (86%) said their “companies will need to be more resilient in the future”.

The CFOs identified equipment failure (66%), cyber attacks (60%) and natural disasters (52%) as the main causes of damage to their organisations in the past five years, yet 54% of respondents said their organisations have not developed any formal loss- recovery plans.

FM Global, which insures multinationals, surveyed 100 US-based companies across a range of industries, and found a low level of preparedness to respond to operational risks.

“It’s surprising the number of companies that have been harmed by operational risk events, coupled with the relatively low number of companies that feel they are very well prepared for a disruption event,” said Eric Jones, operations vice president and global manager of business risk consulting at FM Global.