The 2015 FM Global Resilience Index Annual Report

Effective supply chain risk management is critical for swift recovery from unexpected, adverse events that disrupt business operations.

The 2015 FM Global Resilience Index offers powerful insights to help business executives target their investments towards more reliable returns and to protect their customers from unforeseen disruption.

The index provides an annual ranking of 130 countries and territories according to their business resilience to supply chain disruption. The scores that generate the ranking are calculated as an equally-weighted composite of nine core drivers that affect resilience significantly and directly.

This year’s index captures a fascinating mix of change and stability.

The key results are summarized below.

1. Norway retains its top position in the index from last year, with strong results for economic productivity, control of corruption, political risk and resilience to an oil shock. The country’s management of fire risk offers opportunity to improve still further.
2. Despite its massive oil reserves, Venezuela ranks 130, placing it at the bottom of the index, and reflecting the many challenges South America faces, ranging from economic and political to geological, with its west coast on the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’.
3. Taiwan has jumped the most in the index - 52 places in the annual ranking to 37; more than any other country. Its rise is due mainly to a substantial improvement in the country’s commitment to risk management, as it relates both to natural hazard risk and fire risk. Given the country’s location at the western edge of the Philippine sea plate, this is a welcome development.
4. Ukraine, ranked 107, and Kazakhstan, ranked 102, dropped more places this year than any other country; a fall of 31 places each. Unsurprisingly, for Ukraine, the worsening political risk, combined with poorer infrastructure, was to blame. The fall for Kazakhstan this year reflects a poorer commitment to natural hazard risk management in the region.
5. In the European Union (EU), Greece fell from position 54 to 65. The recent victory of the anti-austerity Syriza party almost certainly will usher in a period of greater friction and turbulence with its EU partners.
6. France, ranked 19, trails Germany at 6. France has slid down the index in recent years reflecting a rising risk of terrorism - evidenced tragically in Paris - and deteriorating perceptions of both infrastructure and local suppliers. Also exposed to terrorism risk is the United Kingdom, which nevertheless held steady at 20 for the third year running, aided by its relative resistance to oil shocks.