A hard geopolitical rain's a-gonna fall

The signals are no longer faint. From trade fragmentation to kinetic conflict, the global system is repricing geopolitical riskslowly, and then all at once. As Bob Dylan once warned, “And a hard rain’s a-gonna fall”—for financial institutions it has already begun.

Three shifts—regulatory, political and internal factors have catapulted geopolitical risk to the top of boardroom agendas.

The December 2025 announcement of ECB to assess 110 of its directly supervised banks’ ability to capture geopolitical risks—marks the regulatory trend—the first of the trio.