The financial industry is being pulled between two powerful forces: bottom-up financial technology is enabling seamless integration, while top-down geoeconomic statecraft is promoting fragmentation. So much for the conventional wisdom that finance will simply become smoother, cheaper, and more globalized over time.
SAN FRANCISCO—Two secular trends will shape finance in the years ahead, one powered from the bottom up by transformative technological innovations, and the other from the top down by geoeconomic influences. Managing each will require major adaptations from financial firms and their regulators, a task complicated by the fact that the two trends are pulling in opposite directions, and their resolution is not yet clear.
