A World Economic Forum (WEF) Covid-19 risks report has found that a global recession is the biggest concern for senior risk professionals.

The report, Covid-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and Its Implications, was released today and found that 68.6% of risk professionals rank a prolonged recession of the global economy as the most likely fallout for the world.

A prolonged recession was also found to be the greatest concern for the world by 58.5% of risk professionals, and the most worrisome for their country by 66.3%.

Other risks ranked highly as the most likely to occur were a surge in bankruptcies, with 56.8%, failure of industries or sectors in some countries to properly recover with 55.9%, and high levels of structural unemployment with 49.3%.

Tighter restrictions on cross-border movement had 48.7% of risk professionals concerned, weakening of the fiscal positions of the major economies 45.8%, and protracted disruption of global supply chains 42.1%.

Economic risk dominated the report, however another global outbreak of Covid-19 ranked 3rd on as the greatest concern for the world.

Cyber attacks and data fraud due to sustained shift in working patterns was ranked 3rd when risk professionals were asked what is the most worrisome risk for your country.

“The crisis has devastated lives and livelihoods. It has triggered an economic crisis with far-reaching implications and revealed the inadequacies of the past,” Saadia Zahidi, managing director of WEF said.

“As well as managing the immediate impact of the pandemic, leaders must work with each other and with all sectors of society to tackle emerging known risks and build resilience against the unknown.”

The report surveyed 350 senior risk professionals, in partnership with Marsh and Zurich.