Only 46% of Vietnam Insurance Firms Measure Total Risk Costs

Global Insurance Desk: Nearly half of organisations in Vietnam report that their total cost of insurable risk is climbing, yet fewer than half actually track those expenses in any structured way. That finding comes from Aon’s 2025 Global Risk Management Survey. Among Vietnamese respondents, 47.4% said costs were rising, 15.8% saw no change, 10.5% noted a drop, and 26.3% simply did not know. Only 46% measure the full cost of insurable risk, well below the global figure of 67.9%. The measure takes in insurance premiums, third-party fees, retained losses inside deductibles or beyond policy limits, captive costs and internal expenses.

Brokers remain the go-to source of advice for Vietnamese firms reviewing their insurance programmes. Fully 89.3% rely on broker input to judge whether cover is delivering value, compared with 81.1% worldwide. Senior management judgement and comparisons with earlier programmes each featured for 57.1% of local respondents. Insurer advice was used by 39.3% and industry benchmarking by 25%. Quantitative analytics to test scenarios and programme options lagged far behind at just 17.9%.

The survey also shows real losses from risks that can hit insurance programmes. Property damage ranked among the top current risks in Vietnam and 75% of those who identified it said their organisation had already suffered a related loss. Business interruption and supply chain failure each produced losses for a third of respondents who flagged those risks, while a quarter reported losses tied to vendor management or third-party exposure.

Aon notes that insurance cannot cover every threat. Vendor management, supply chain resilience and regulatory compliance sit among Vietnam’s priority risks that often fall outside traditional policies. Firms therefore need to decide which exposures can be transferred, which should be retained and how uninsurable risks will be handled.

Risk management systems themselves look less mature than the global average. Formal risk oversight exists at only 46.7% of Vietnamese organisations against 61.4% worldwide. Just 20% use a structured, enterprise-wide process to identify risks, compared with 46.9% globally. Captive insurance remains rare: 14.3% currently have a captive or a cell in a protected cell company, 3.6% plan to set one up within three years, and 82.1% have no such arrangement. Globally those figures stand at 22% with an existing structure and 4.1% planning one.

Where captives are used or planned in Vietnam, property damage and business interruption dominate at 100%, followed by health and medical risks at 75%.

The Aon survey drew responses from 2,941 participants across 63 countries and territories and 16 industries. It is conducted every two years and allows direct comparison between Vietnam and the wider global picture.