Today, the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) released the results of its “2014 AFP Risk Survey,” sponsored by Oliver Wyman. The survey of 554 AFP members revealed that although organizations expect the global business environment to remain challenging this year, finance executives are now more focused on internal issues than on the macroeconomic climate.

The external environment continues to cause concern: Forty-five percent of respondents said their company is exposed to more earnings uncertainty today than it experienced three years ago, and only 16 percent said they're now operating with less uncertainty than in 2010. The causes vary. Just over a quarter of respondents (26 percent) cited financial factors such as credit, liquidity, interest rate, and currency risks as the primary driver of their earnings uncertainty. Almost as many (23 percent) cited business/operational risks (e.g., supply-chain disruptions, litigation, IT), and another quarter selected external factors such as regulatory and country risks. Only 19 percent reported that macroeconomic factors, such as GDP growth and inflation, are the key driver of their earnings uncertainty.

To manage their financials amid these uncertainties, companies need to accurately forecast their myriad risks—but that's easier said than done. For 35 percent of the companies represented in the AFP survey, forecasting risks is more difficult today than it was three years ago; risk forecasts are easier today for only 23 percent of respondents. Almost a third of finance executives said that capturing relevant data from external sources causes forecasting challenges, but many more said it's challenging to capture relevant data from within the company. (See Figure 1.)