New year’s resolution: Meet with commercial clients more often

Commercial clients aren’t meeting with their brokers enough. 

That’s one conclusion in Hub International’s 2026 North American Outlook, which finds 44% of respondents meet with their insurance broker on a semi-annual or annual basis. “Far too infrequent to keep pace with a rapidly changing business environment,” the report says. 

What’s more, the report finds business clients know they have risk gaps — but they aren’t doing anything about it. 

The survey polled business leaders across Canada and the U.S. who work at both public and private companies. Half of respondents operate at only a basic level of risk maturity, focused primarily on compliance, safety and regulatory risks. 

Most organizations surveyed lack the structures and specific risk management expertise to translate their risk awareness into an enterprise-wide view of risk, with just 5% reporting characteristics consistent with advanced maturity. 

And only 15% of leaders agree that risk management is a shared responsibility for all employees, despite growing cyber, technology and reputational threats. 

As for what companies flag as their biggest risks, business leaders identified four primary threats:   

• Rising operating and labour costs are the top pressures on profits for both U.S. and Canadian organizations in this year’s survey, with 92% of respondents fearing profitability impact. Only 22% are completely confident in their ability to manage these risks. 

• Technology, cybersecurity, and AI-related risks are the second largest, with 60% of leaders ranking them among the top three threats to organizational profitability. They also express low confidence in managing these risks. 

• Regulatory and legal challenges saw the largest year-over-year increase in concern, rising from 29% last year to 50% in 2025, as leaders face evolving data privacy, AI, cyber, environmental and corporate governance requirements. 

• Geopolitical risk is also increasing, and more than one-third (34%) of leaders say geopolitical instability is a threat to profits. Last year, only a fifth (19%) identified it as a concern. Only 15% feel completely confident in managing this risk. 

One of the top solutions is simple, Hub says: businesses must interact with their brokers more frequently. 

“Every strategic shift introduces new exposures and the potential for uninsured losses if not addressed quickly. In fact, about 72% of companies that engage in monthly or quarterly conversations with their insurance providers reported making changes to their insurance or risk programs within the past three months,” the report reads. 

“Proactively managing risk requires a close, ongoing partnership with an organization’s insurance broker and risk services advisor to best enable company profitability, resiliency and vitality.”