The AICPA and CIMA have launched its Business Resilience Toolkit to support finance professionals and business leaders in building resilience amid economic uncertainty and challenging conditions.

New and rapidly changing risk events — ranging from economic and inflationary pressures to geopolitical tensions, disruptive technologies like AI, and escalating cyber and privacy threats — are driving significant disruptions. These forces are reshaping business models, strategic planning, and in some cases, threatening organizational survival. According to 2024 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20.4% of businesses fail in their first year after opening, 49.4% fail in their first 5 years, and 65.3% fail in their first 10 years.

As economic uncertainty becomes a defining feature of the global business landscape, resilience is no longer optional, it’s essential. Finance leaders are being called upon not just to manage risk, but to lead the strategic response.

To support this shift, AICPA and CIMA have developed the Business Resilience Toolkit, tailored for finance professionals and business leaders. This resource offers practical tools, strategic frameworks, and thought-provoking prompts to help organizations:

Scan the external environment with clarity

Evaluate how economic shifts impact operations

Adapt strategies to weather uncertainty and seize new opportunities

“With record numbers of businesses failing or under financial pressure, access to strong financial management expertise can make the difference between survival and failure,” noted Tom Hood, EVP Business Growth & Engagement for AICPA and CIMA. “Financial business partnering is essential to navigating uncertainty.”

The Business Resilience Toolkit equips accounting and finance professionals to act as strategic advisors and critical business partners. Hood continued, “resilience is not a fixed state, it’s a capability. And with the right tools, finance can build it.”

In a 2024 AICPA and CIMA report only 37% of senior finance leaders say their organizations have comprehensive enterprise risk management (ERM) in place. Just 30% rate their risk oversight as “mature” or “robust”. The toolkit encourages fresh thinking about how uncertainty and volatility interact with the different parts of an organization and explores some key areas including:

Understanding Economic and Policy Risks,

Developing Integrated Thinking,

Identifying and Monitoring Key Drivers,

Enabling Proactive Response and,

Utilizing Strategic Tools and Exploring Opportunities.

Aimed at accounting and finance professionals in both corporate settings and those working in firms, it offers a set of prompts to help evaluate how shifting conditions could impact their business model, strategy, and operations.

While not exhaustive, the toolkit aims to encourage fresh thinking about how uncertainty and volatility interact with the different parts of an organization. By combining insight with proactive planning, finance leaders can build a more resilient business, ready to respond, recover, and even thrive in times of change.

The AICPA and CIMA Business Resilience Toolkit is available at https://www.aicpa-cima.com/advocacy/download/business-resilience-toolkit.