17% Risk Leaders Feel Ready To Manage AI & Governance Risks: Riskonnect Report

According to a recent study called the 2026 New Generation of Risk Report conducted by Riskonnect, only 17% of risk leaders feel very prepared to manage AI and AI governance risks.

Riskonnect further found that less than half (46%) of risk leaders stated that their organisations have trained employees to assess AI-generated outputs. This highlights a growing gap between AI adoption and workforce preparedness.

The study surveyed 250 risk, compliance, and resilience professionals. While 66% of organisations have trained employees on rules, responsibilities and defined roles related to AI oversight and accountability, considerably fewer have provided training focused on practical AI risks and decision-making.

Only 35% have trained employees to interpret and act on AI-driven insights, while just 18% have formally trained or briefed their entire workforce on the risks associated with agentic AI. Nearly four years after generative AI entered mainstream use, only 35% of respondents said their entire organisation had been trained or briefed on generative AI risks.

“An AI policy sets the rules. Training gives employees the practical knowledge to apply those rules in their day-to-day work. As AI permeates every corner of the organization, employees need to know how to validate what AI gives them, recognize the risks, and make responsible decisions. Pairing strong governance and policies with useful training allows organizations to accelerate AI innovation while minimizing risk to the enterprise,” said Jim Wetekamp, Riskonnect’s CEO.

AI Policies Are Growing, But Remain Limited

The report found that 72% of risk leaders now have a policy governing employee use of AI, up from 58% in 2025. However, only 54% said their organisations have clear guidelines specifying which AI tools employees can use and how they should be used.

The gap is more pronounced with agentic AI. Among companies considering incorporating agentic AI solutions into their operations or products, 58% have not yet assessed the associated risks.

At the same time, AI is becoming an increasingly important tool for risk management teams themselves. 74% of risk leaders said their organisations currently use or plan to use AI for risk management, up from 70% in 2025 and 62% in 2024.

The most common applications include risk assessment at 37%, scenario planning and simulations at 34%, and identifying previously overlooked risks at 32%. Another 31% said AI had helped their organisations identify gaps or weaknesses in internal processes or controls over the previous 12 months.

Economic Risk Overtakes Cybersecurity As A Leading Concern

The report also points to a changing corporate risk landscape. For the first time, economic risk tied with cybersecurity as the top threat cited by risk leaders, with 55% of respondents saying each was having a severe or significant impact on their businesses.

Cybersecurity had held the top position for the previous two years.

Geopolitical volatility is adding further pressure. The most significant impacts reported by risk leaders include higher operating or production costs (65%), increased cybersecurity threats or attacks (58%), supply chain and shipping disruptions or delays (50%), and rising energy costs (49%).

Risk teams are also facing challenges from within their own organisations. 41% of risk leaders said that, during the past year, another department made a risk-based decision without consulting the risk team, resulting in a significant and unforeseen disruption elsewhere in the business.

Risk Teams Face Rising Pressure As Budgets Remain Flat

The pressure on risk professionals is increasing even as investment in their functions remains constrained. 75% of risk leaders said pressure on their roles had increased over the past year, with 37% describing the pressure as high or extreme.

Only 25% reported an increase in their risk management technology budgets over the past six months, while 66% said their budgets had remained unchanged.

Against this backdrop, risk teams increasingly turn to AI to manage growing workloads and respond faster to emerging threats.