According to PwC’s 29th Global CEO Survey, only 46 per cent of insurance chief executive officers are confident of their company’s prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months, down from 56 per cent in 2025.

The PUNCH reports that the latest report is based on responses from 4,454 CEOs across 95 countries and territories.

A similar figure was presented across all industries, as only 30 per cent of CEOs in the survey are confident about revenue growth in 2026, the lowest level in five years, compared with 38 per cent in 2025 and 56 per cent in 2022. A key driver of this despondence is that most companies are struggling to turn AI investment into tangible returns. Overall, 33 per cent report gains in either cost or revenue from AI, while 56 per cent say they have seen no significant financial benefit to date.

Despite widespread experimentation, only 12 per cent of CEOs say AI has delivered both cost and revenue benefits. Additionally, business leaders are also grappling with rising geopolitical risk, intensifying cyber threats, and a constant need for reinvention, according to the report.

“The survey points to a growing divide between companies piloting AI and those deploying it at scale. CEOs reporting both cost and revenue gains are two to three times more likely to say they have embedded AI extensively across products and services, demand generation, and strategic decision-making,” said the report.

In the insurance sector, the report said, “What explains this ebbing confidence? Although CEOs remain generally optimistic about growth prospects for the global economy, they’re less confident in many countries about the local economic outlook. Industry cycles are also at work.

For example, lower confidence about short-term revenue growth among insurance CEOs comes as a golden period for industry profitability is now ending. Equally, oil executives are facing weak demand and industry-wide concern about oversupply.”

Apart from concerns about AI, climate risks were also at play with “More than four in ten CEOs (42 per cent) say their company is at least moderately exposed to the risk of a significant financial loss arising from climate change in the year ahead. CEOs in the insurance (51 per cent) and power and utilities (67 per cent) sectors are most likely to say their company is at least moderately exposed.”

This is even as the report found it surprising that, for example, fewer than one in three insurance CEOs say their company has defined processes to account for climate risks and opportunities in capital allocation.

Generally, CEOs’ confidence has softened further amid rising exposure to external risks. About 20 per cent of CEOs globally cite tariffs as a risk that their companies are exposed to in 2026, though exposure varies widely by region. In the Middle East, it is six per cent, 28 per cent in the Chinese Mainland, 35 per cent in Mexico, and US CEOs report high exposure of 22 per cent.

Cyber risk has also risen sharply, with 31 per cent of CEOs now citing it as a major threat, up from 24 per cent last year and 21 per cent two years ago. In response, 84 per cent say they plan to strengthen enterprise-wide cybersecurity as part of their response to geopolitical risk.

Other risks that went higher were macroeconomic volatility (31 per cent), technology disruption (24 per cent), and geopolitics (23 per cent), while concern about inflation is marginally down (from 27 per cent last year to 25 per cent).

According to the CEOs, reinvention has become essential to growth, with around 42 per cent starting to compete in new sectors over the past five years. Among those planning major acquisitions, 44 per cent expect to invest outside their current industry, with technology the most attractive adjacent sector.

Additionally, 51 per cent of CEOs plan to make international investments in 2026. The top three destinations ranked by the CEOs make the US first with 35 per cent, followed by the UK and Germany, both at 13 per cent, and the Chinese Mainland at 11 per cent. It should be noted that interest in India has nearly doubled year-on-year, with 13 per cent of CEOs planning international investment, placing it among their top three destinations.

These shifts in global investment patterns were highlighted by the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, during a discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, noting that there were opportunities for Nigeria to present itself as a viable player in the global supply chain.

She said, “What I would like to see is a continued effort to attract investment into the country, because there is an opportunity now to attract these supply chains. If there is one thing I would say, it is that everything we can do to showcase Nigeria as a country worthy of investment is what we should be doing.

“And we should deliberately have strategies to go after those investments and investors, to go to China, the US, whatever it takes, to come and invest in our country. As companies seek to diversify supply chains, a lot of that movement is still within Asia. Diversification is moving from China but still staying in Asia, and India is another destination. We should attract a sizeable chunk of that.”