LONDON, 30 September, 2026
According to new research by Marsh (NYSE: MRSH), a leading global professional services firm, while the UK retail sector remains resilient after years of disruption caused by events such as supply chain, cyber, and weather-related risks, it risks building longer-term resilience by prioritising more immediate pressures such as protecting margins and managing rising employment costs.
Marsh’s Retail Pulse 2026 Report, which is based on a survey of 350 senior UK retail executives, finds 93% have faced significant disruption in the past year. In response, two in five have redirected long-term investment to cover short-term costs, highlighting a disconnect between spending and resilience. While 71% of respondents agreed that disruption is now a permanent feature of doing business, tactical measures remain largely in place: 47% are extending the life of ageing IT systems, 53% are accepting higher risk exposure to protect margins, and 30% are reducing operational flexibility.
According to the research, cyber is now the number one risk facing UK businesses (46%, up from 39% in 2024), yet only 5% of retail leaders say they feel protected from cyber incidents or exposure within their organisation. At the same time, 65% of retailers say they are spending excessive budgets while seeing poor returns across areas including workforce, technology and supply chain — suggesting that higher spending is not necessarily translating into greater resilience. That disconnect is particularly stark in cyber: nearly two-thirds (64%) of retailers hit by a major cyberattack last year also say they were overinvesting in cyber resilience.
The report also identifies a disconnect on staff safety: 85% of executives believe their business protects staff well, falling to 72% among HR leaders. Nearly nine in ten retail leaders (89%) do not rank staff wellbeing as a top challenge, despite violence and abuse against retail workers running at four times pre-pandemic levels.
The report calls on retailers to review where budgets are renewed by habit rather than evidence, involve frontline, HR and risk teams earlier in decisions that increase exposure, and judge cyber and resilience investment by speed of recovery rather than size of spend.
Kelvyn Sampson, Retail, Leisure and Hospitality Industries Leader at Marsh Risk UK, said:
“UK retailers have spent years becoming better at fighting fires. The danger now is that constant firefighting has become the strategy. With disruption increasingly a permanent feature of doing business, retailers need to continue looking beyond the last crisis and ask whether their investment is making them more resilient to the next one. That means being more disciplined about where money is spent, bringing frontline and risk perspectives into decisions earlier, and measuring resilience by how well the business can anticipate, adapt and recover, not simply by how much it spends.”
Marsh (NYSE: MRSH) is a global leader in risk, reinsurance and capital, people and investments, and management consulting, advising clients in 130 countries. With annual revenue of $27 billion and more than 95,000 colleagues, Marsh helps build the confidence to thrive through the power of perspective. For more information, visit marsh.com, or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
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