Marsh & McLennan Companies

Over the last year, we have reached a new and important turning point in the struggle to manage cyber risk. In the war between cyber attackers and cyber defenders, we have reached what Winston Churchill might call “the end of the beginning.”
Three characteristics mark this new phase. First, global cyber-crime has reached such a high level of sophistication that it represents a mature, though illicit, global business sector in its own right.
Second, with near-ubiquitous technologies now connecting the digital and physical worlds to an unprecedented degree, new potential exists for individual cyber-attacks to devastate critical business and operational processes.
The third characteristic taking shape today is the rising importance of institutions—governments, regulatory authorities, law enforcement agencies, the insurance industry, and others—as a critical to counter the global cyber threat. Cyber risks can only be effectively dealt with if there is a common understanding of their importance and increased interconnected nature.
Against this backdrop, the 2018 edition of the MMC Cyber Risk Handbook provides insights on the shifting cyber threat environment, emerging global regulatory trends, and best practices in the journey to cyber resiliency. The handbook features articles from business leaders across Marsh & McLennan Companies and our expert and notable collaborators. We hope this handbook will help you better understand what it takes to achieve cyber resiliency in the face of this significant and persistent threat.

Financial services companies have gone through major changes over the last 10 years. Nonetheless, while the turmoil in financial services has been dramatic, other industries have been more radically transformed. For example, digital technology has destroyed established business models in music and publishing. Such a transformation may now be on the horizon for financial services. We believe financial services are becoming “modular”, with digital distribution platforms, new product providers, alternative sources of capital and a growth in outsourcing fundamentally reshaping the industry.
Established firms will need to respond to the modular industry structure. Some will try to compete with commerce and technology firms and build sophisticated customer platforms. Others will concentrate on areas of sustainable advantage, making the most of their customer data, analytics and funding models. And they will reinvent their back offices as supply chains.
Banks and insurers have adapted to new technology in the past and we think they will do so again. Nonetheless, financial services will be more modular in ten years’ time and today’s banks and insurers may look very different.
For consumers, modular financial services means more choice, transparency and seamless switching between multiple providers.

Asia Pacific (APAC)* is the fastest ageing region in the world with more than 200 million people expected to move into the ranks of the elderly (aged 65 years and above) between now and 2030. This represents an increase of 71 percent in the number of elderly people, compared to increases of 55 percent in North America and 31 percent in Europe over the same period.
Driven by improving socio-economic conditions and increasing life-expectancy, the speed at which societies in APAC are ageing poses an unprecedented challenge. For comparison, Singapore’s elderly population will rise from 11 to 20 percent in the next 15 years, while it took France 49 years to do the same. By 2030, Japan will become the world’s first “ultra-aged” nation, with the elderly accounting for more than 28 percent of the population, while Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan will be considered “super-aged”, with more than 21 percent.
Many APAC countries are moving from a period when they reaped a “demographic dividend” to one where they face the prospect of paying a “demographic tax”. Such a significant demographic shift will be accompanied by a host of financial and socio-economic risks affecting multiple stakeholders, as shown in Exhibit A. Consequently, there is an urgent need to evaluate each country’s readiness to manage increasingly aged societies and to develop solutions that mitigate the associated risks. This report takes a deeper look into the impact of societal ageing on elderly healthcare costs in APAC.