Marsh McLennan has presented its global risks report, which recognises misinformation, climate change and economic slowdown as some of the main problems.
How to establish an agenda free of international interests? This question opened the Global Risks Report, presented this Wednesday 29 in Lima by the multinational professional services company Marsh McLennan. The study started from the premise that the world order is changing and faces problems such as greater political instability, polarizing narratives, as well as an erosion of trust and insecurity.
More than 900 global risk experts, policymakers and industry leaders were surveyed between September and October 2024 to produce the final report. Additional opinions from 11,000 business executives on the top risks to doing business in their country were also included. 23% of respondents identified interstate armed conflict as the biggest immediate risk in 2025. The list is followed by external weather events (14%), geo-economic confrontation (8%), and false or incorrect information (7%).
This last indicator is striking, because it shows that while technological advances generate optimism, they also raise alarms about the spread of false or misleading information. In a global context, where Meta has just withdrawn its third-party data verification system, it is not surprising that misinformation is among the main short-term risks of the survey.
“This problem has always existed. What happens is that there is an element that has aggravated it and that is artificial intelligence. Before, you only needed to build a misrepresentation and spread it on your own. Instead, AI has simplified the process and uses algorithms to amplify this expansion,” said Gerardo Herrera , executive director of Marsh Advisory for Latin America . during the presentation of the report.
When it comes to long-term risks, climate change and natural resource scarcity come to the fore. At the same time, 64% believe that in ten years, we will live in a multipolar order, where medium and large powers compete and set regional economic standards. Everything seems to indicate that the era of the US-led unipolar order is numbered, at least in the perception of the average respondent.
THE CASE OF PERU
On the other hand, the study addressed the political and economic risks that have plagued Peru in the current decade. Since 2021, the main problem has been the economic slowdown, something incredible, considering that the country has one of the most stable currencies in Latin America.
Other liabilities of the Peruvian economy in the last five years are the proliferation of illicit economic activity, unemployment, digital inequality and, more recently, organized crime. For Herrera, the continuity of the informal economy plays a key role.
“The informal economy has two elements: the first is that it does not guarantee a long-term subsistence mechanism for the population. The second is that these mechanisms are fragile, and we have seen this in the pandemic. There is also a cause-effect relationship between illicit economic activities and organized crime. It is not an issue that can wait for the next ten years: this informality has significant effects on society and in different fields,” the Marsh Advisory spokesperson told AméricaEconomía .
On the other hand, Herrera recognized cybersecurity as one of the main areas that companies must prioritize in the short term. In fact, in Peru, cybercrime is a recent problem. In recent months, there have been cases of massive hacking of databases in banks and universities.
“ Hackers spend months or years figuring out how to infect an organization: they interpret its system, bypass its security codes, analyze the behavior of the management of funds. In this way, they understand who is who, they fill themselves with data and the organizations do not know it. And finally, they attack on vulnerable dates such as the end of year holidays,” he added.
Herrera points out that many companies refrain from publicly acknowledging their cybersecurity shortcomings because they do not want their competitors to know their vulnerabilities. “It becomes an individual fight, but they must find a mechanism to combat cybercriminals. It has to be through associations or through the State itself.”
With the 2026 election year approaching and the possibility of an “atomized politics” made up of more than 40 parties, Herrera argues that Peru is in a dangerous scenario. “When there is no party structure and we have a great fragmentation, we do not necessarily have trained people who understand the deep responsibilities of the State. This generates greater risks for political stability, so I think that educating communities about the responsibility of verifying data in campaigns is important,” he suggests.
