More than two-thirds of executives polled in a recent survey reported feeling more stressed at the beginning of 2025 than they did at the start of 2024.

The survey, conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of Sentry Insurance, found stress levels elevated in 67% of participants. At the same time, 74% of executives said they were not completely confident that their company’s current insurance coverage is adequate.

“Our research highlighted a recurring theme: managing risk is a big part of managing stress,” said David Dickinson, customer research director at Sentry. “Executives are experiencing worsening external challenges and putting strategies in place to protect the future of their businesses. This year, many are increasing safety measures, reassessing their insurance, and making adjustments to navigate external pressures.”

Wakefield Research polled 1,000 owners and C-suite leaders of U.S. companies for Sentry’s 2025 C-Suite Stress Index.

Nearly half (47%) of business leaders reported optimism that their companies will thrive this year. Of those optimists, 63% described the stress they face heading into 2025 as higher compared to this time last year.

Economic uncertainty (47%), supply chain challenges (44%), costs of employee health care (41%), labor shortages (38%) and inflation (36%) ranked as the top five concerns among the survey participants.

In addition to economic and labor factors, 72% of surveyed execs expressed concerns about rising litigation and multi-million-dollar verdicts in their industry. Ninety percent said their business has been affected by severe weather in the past five years, with nearly two-thirds (63%) experiencing outages that left company, customer, or vendor systems temporarily inoperable.

Specifically on the insurance front, Sentry found that nearly all executives (97%) plan to reevaluate their insurance policies this year. Forty-three percent will reevaluate their policies with an eye to adding insurance coverage to lower risks; 38% are looking to shore up areas where they are not currently covered but know they should be.

“In 2025, many leaders appear to be basing their approach to business insurance on their outlooks for their respective businesses,” Sentry said in the full report. “The majority of leaders (55%) who expect their companies to thrive this year are planning to boost their insurance coverage for additional protection.”

Sentry Insurance is a mutual insurance company that specializes in business insurance. The company is based in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Wakefield Research is a B2B and B2C market research and PR polling firm located in Arlington, Virginia.