This insight ran through the SWISS GRC DAY 2026, which brought together more than 300 experts and executives from business, government, and academia at the Radisson Blu Hotel at Zurich Airport.
The event was opened by Besfort Kuqi, Founder and CEO of Swiss GRC AG. In his welcome speech, he emphasised the importance of exchange between science, practice, and technology to make organisations more resilient and capable of making decisions in an increasingly dynamic environment.
At the outset, Nikolai Tsenov, Head of Solutions & Innovation at Swiss GRC, reminded us that the challenge of risk management has fundamentally changed over history. While in the past there was a lack of knowledge about risks, today companies face the task of drawing the right conclusions from an ever-growing amount of information.
Various speakers from academia and practice shed light on how this can be achieved. Prof. Dr. Werner Gleißner, Professor of Risk Management at the Technical University of Dresden and CEO of FutureValue Group AG, and Florian Worm, Head of Enterprise Risk Management at HARTMANN GROUP, demonstrated why risks need to be more strongly quantified, aggregated, and linked to strategy and corporate value. Risk quantification, scenario analyses, and simulations do not provide certainty about the future but enable more informed decisions under uncertainty.
Alexandra Burns, Partner and Head of Risk & Regulatory Consulting at PwC, focused on the increasing complexity of modern risk landscapes. Geopolitical developments, technological changes, and economic dependencies reinforce one another, making traditional risk considerations increasingly inadequate. It becomes all the more important to recognise weak signals early and to understand risks in their interactions.
Michael Niedermann, Head of Consulting at Swiss GRC, clarified that effective risk management ultimately goes far beyond methods and processes. A live survey among the participants revealed that 45 percent consider open communication and transparency as the most important lever for stronger risk culture, followed by psychological safety (25 percent) and a stronger role model function of management (17 percent). The results underscore that risks are often overlooked not due to a lack of information but because critical issues are not addressed in time.
This issue was also picked up by Prof. Dr. Stefan Hunziker from Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and Dr. Alexander Hilsbos from Insel Gruppe in their debate. From a scientific and practical perspective, they discussed when risk management actually creates added value. The central insight: It is not reports, registers, or visualisations that have an impact, but decisions that are made differently based on a better understanding of uncertainty.
Zoya Miari, founder of Waves to Home, concluded the event. With her personal contribution, she reminded that behind every risk analysis, every crisis, and every decision, there are people, and resilience is also a matter of trust, communication, and cohesion.
SWISS GRC DAY 2026 made it clear: The future of risk management does not lie in additional reports or controls but in the ability of organisations to understand uncertainty, integrate different perspectives, and derive better decisions from them.
Press Contact:
Yahya Mohamed Mao
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Swiss GRC AG
yahya.mao@swissgrc.com
+41 41 220 75 15