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While in #Davos, between closed-door sessions, I stepped into the Open Forum for a public discussion on uncertainty, risk, and long-term system resilience.
- Nikita Kuzmin
- Jan 25
- 2 min read
Grounded in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025, the panel reflected a shift many institutions are already sensing: uncertainty is no longer episodic — it is becoming the operating environment.
Several themes stood out:
a measurable global democratic decline over the past two decades, and
increasing fragmentation of systems once assumed to be universal and stable.
From a financial-infrastructure perspective, one discussion point particularly resonated with me: the growing plausibility of local or regional alternatives to SWIFT, including a potential EU-centric variant. On a conservative horizon, this feels increasingly less hypothetical and more operationally plausible. For those of us working in global payments, that makes now the right moment to pay closer attention — so that when such systems emerge, they are not surprises, but scenarios we have already modeled against.
I was especially attentive to Florence Gaub’s perspective. Her work within NATO’s research division emphasizes structured intelligence gathering, early scenario modeling, and disciplined anticipation — not reactive crisis management. What struck me was how transferable this approach is to large financial institutions: not as a one-off exercise, but as a standing capability that helps organizations stay ahead rather than scramble once conditions materialize.
Public discussions like this matter — not because they offer definitive answers, but because they sharpen the questions institutions need to be asking earlier. In an age where uncertainty is persistent rather than exceptional, the ability to anticipate, stress-test, and pre-configure responses may become as critical as execution itself.
Expertly moderated by Mina AlOraibi , with valuable contributions from:
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