Boosting Financial Lines Resilience: Five Key Challenges for UK Businesses

The recent AIG UK Financial Lines Forum 2025 brought together AIG leaders, brokers, clients and expert speakers to unpack the evolving financial lines risk landscape and share practical insights into major business challenges shaping tomorrow’s opportunities.

The half-day event featured a series of thought-provoking panel discussions and a keynote at London’s Barbican Centre.

“Hosting the Forum at the Barbican, named after a fortress and a symbol of resilience, felt like an apt backdrop for our sector’s story,” says Géraud Verhille, Head of Financial Lines, AIG UK. “In a world being reshaped by geopolitical volatility, cyberattacks, AI, a fluid legal and regulatory environment, and significant litigation activity, there is shared responsibility among all of us working in this industry to help clients navigate today’s landscape.”

Discussions at the Forum uncovered five key challenges to operations and continuity facing businesses, where financial lines cover can help boost resilience.

1. The Legal and Regulatory Landscape

Changes in the legal and regulatory environment mean clients face growing scrutiny across multiple jurisdictions.

• The UK Building Safety Act 2022 has already impacted the construction industry over cladding and fire-safety issues and will continue to shape Professional Indemnity (PI) exposure.
• Financial institutions are navigating an increased focus on fraud and misconduct.
• Proposals in the Employment Rights Bill, which paves the way for significant reforms to UK employment law, are likely to have implications for employers - particularly in areas such as unfair dismissal.

“With greater coordination between regulators, and a focus on enforcement as well as non-financial misconduct, consumer protection and corporate culture, we can expect this complex risk landscape to continue,” says Nina Nayee, Technical Head of Financial Lines Claims, AIG UK & EMEA.

2. Guarding Against Cyber Threats

Reflecting on the need to build resilience against disruption by cyberattacks, Géraud Verhille noted,: “Cyber is no longer just an IT issue - it’s an enterprise risk with board-level importance.”

• Many organisations still rely on legacy IT infrastructure while threat actors exploit known vulnerabilities to deploy ransomware and malware, increasingly using AI to automate and enhance the sophistication of attacks.
• In many cases, incidents could be prevented with multi-factor authentication, endpoint detection and timely patching, supported by staff training to mitigate against phishing or social engineering, and clearer visibility of digital supply-chain exposures.
• As part of boosting board-level understanding of the organisation’s cyber security posture, business continuity plans should be updated to encompass cyber exposures and breach-response protocols.

“Cyber resiliency must be multi-layered and multi-faceted. Defence in depth is key,” says David Olive, AIG UK's Head of Cyber & Tech. “Organisations are only as strong as their weakest point.”

3. Litigation Funding on the March

Social inflation and the globalisation of claimant litigation are driving both the frequency and severity of liability claims, whilst third-party litigation funding is fuelling more complex, higher-value disputes and pushing up defence costs. These trends are also being reflected in the financial lines sector in the form of mis-selling exposures, creditor litigation, event-driven Directors & Officers (D&O) claims, and rising collective and shareholder actions.

Claims also spread from large corporations to Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and retail customers, expanding overall exposure. In the UK PI market, regulatory scrutiny of solicitors is driving more negligence claims, while for management liability, litigation funding is amplifying collective and shareholder class-action activity worldwide.

4. Defending the Digital Business

Online digital businesses face growing legal and operational risks, even without a direct cyberattack.

• Investment and fintech firms in the UK and EMEA with online customer interfaces are experiencing disputes over trading losses, chargebacks and electronic payments.
• Companies also face business interruption exposures in their digital supply chains if key software vendors or cloud platforms suffer outages or operational errors.
• As organisations deploy AI at scale, it’s crucial to consider new exposures linked to system failures, copyright and Intellectual Property risk, and emerging vulnerabilities.

“We are likely to see an increase in copyright exposure, as companies make greater use of machine-learning outputs,” says Nicci Whitehouse, AIG’s Global Cyber Claims Technical Specialist.

5. Economic Headwinds

Today’s macroeconomic environment is intensifying litigation risk across many sectors.

“Generally, when there’s an economic downturn, we see increasing corporate insolvencies and increasing claims against professionals,” says David Self-Pierson, Head of Financial Lines Claims, AIG UK. “The cost-of-living crisis is driving claimants’ motivation to litigate, where they consider professional services have fallen below the expected standard.”.

Reinforcing Business Resilience

In the face of such challenges, a key part of remaining resilient to and quickly recovering from business disruptions is effective risk management and insurance.

Géraud concluded: “Preparation, response speed and expertise matter more than ever in financial lines business. A global team with deep experience, staying power and specialised capability sets us apart. Working with our broker partners, AIG helps clients manage today’s risks better and approach the future with greater certainty and confidence.”

With decades of Financial Lines underwriting experience, global expertise in handling D&O, PI and Cyber claims for clients of all sizes across business sectors, and multinational reach, AIG is well-positioned to support clients and broker partners in addressing these challenges.

Click here to learn more.

This marketing material is intended for insurance brokers and other insurance professionals for their information. For full terms, conditions and benefits related to AIG products, please refer to the policy and associated documents. This website is owned and operated by AIG. Except as otherwise expressly permitted by AIG , no materials from this website or any website owned, operated, licensed or controlled by AIG may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way. You many download material displayed on this website for your use only, provided that you also retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained on the materials. You may not distribute, modify, transmit, reuse, repost, or use the content of this website for public or commercial purposes, including the text, images, audio, and video without AIG's prior written permission. AIG neither warrants nor represents that your use of materials displayed on this website will not infringe rights of third parties. If you are a journalist and wish to use any of this material, please contact our AIG UK communications team for permission.