The Rewiring:
New Risks, New Rules, New Growth
The Rewiring:
New Risks. New Rules. New Growth.
By the end of 2027, global finance will run on a new rulebook, one that rewires how the system has worked for decades, across five fronts: Technology, Geopolitics, Capital, Talent and Policy.
Five forces are rewiring How finance works
What gets decided now, in law and in code, will shape how the rest of the economy works for years to come.
Form your 2027 strategy: the moves worth making, and the opportunities they open.
Technology
Agentic AI, quantum, and the tokenization stack.
The decade of pilots is ending.
Now
AI and tokenized deposits run in production finance.
Next
Autonomous agents, and the first safeguards on what they may do with money.
2030
Today's encryption starts retiring.
Who's moving
-
Banks and insurers testing whether their AI controls hold up under the new rules.
-
Payment networks racing to set the standard for agent-initiated payments.
-
Security teams migrating to post-quantum cryptography before today’s standards are retired from 2030.
-
Regulators and supervisors writing the first safeguards for AI in finance, and the rules that follow.
Test your governance model against the new frameworks, settle build-or-buy on evidence, and set your quantum migration before the deadlines force it.
Geopolitics
Trade corridors, supply chains, capital flows, data infrastructure and payment rails are being redrawn.
The single global marketplace is giving way to a world organised around blocs.
Money
Sovereignty is concrete: who owns the infrastructure a country's trade runs on, and whose currency settles it.
Compute
Who gets advanced chips, and where data centres are built, are now government decisions.
Who's moving
-
Corporates and investors building positions and partnerships along the new corridors, as capital flows within blocs rather than across open markets.
-
Transaction banks and payment networks weighing which rails to plug into as the system fragments.
-
Corporate treasurers choosing their settlement asset: dollar deposits, local currencies, or stablecoins.
- Central banks building sovereign rails and coordinating oversight as those rails outgrow any single jurisdiction.
-
Governments treating compute and data infrastructure as strategic assets.
In a world of blocs, infrastructure is strategy: the corridors you build along, the rails you connect to, and the money you settle in decide who you depend on.
The single global marketplace is giving way to a world organised around blocs.
Money
Sovereignty is concrete: who owns the infrastructure a country's trade runs on, and whose currency settles it.
Compute
Who gets advanced chips, and where data centres are built, are now government decisions.
Who's moving
-
Corporates and investors building positions and partnerships along the new corridors, as capital flows within blocs rather than across open markets.
-
Transaction banks and payment networks weighing which rails to plug into as the system fragments.
-
Corporate treasurers choosing their settlement asset: dollar deposits, local currencies, or stablecoins.
- Central banks building sovereign rails and coordinating oversight as those rails outgrow any single jurisdiction.
-
Governments treating compute and data infrastructure as strategic assets.
In a world of blocs, infrastructure is strategy: the corridors you build along, the rails you connect to, and the money you settle in decide who you depend on.
Geopolitics
Trade corridors, supply chains, capital flows, data infrastructure and payment rails are being redrawn.
GEOPOLITICS
Trade corridors, supply chains, capital flows, data infrastructure and payment rails are being redrawn.
The single global marketplace is giving way to a world organised around blocs.
Money
Sovereignty is concrete: who owns the infrastructure a country's trade runs on, and whose currency settles it.
Compute
Who gets advanced chips, and where data centres are built, are now government decisions.
Who's moving
-
Corporates and investors building positions and partnerships along the new corridors, as capital flows within blocs rather than across open markets.
-
Transaction banks and payment networks weighing which rails to plug into as the system fragments.
-
Corporate treasurers choosing their settlement asset: dollar deposits, local currencies, or stablecoins.
- Central banks building sovereign rails and coordinating oversight as those rails outgrow any single jurisdiction.
-
Governments treating compute and data infrastructure as strategic assets.
In a world of blocs, infrastructure is strategy: the corridors you build along, the rails you connect to, and the money you settle in decide who you depend on.
Capital
Money now moves at the speed of the rulebook.
Capital now weighs the rulebook as much as the technology, on both sides of the market: how money is raised, and how it is invested.
Raising it
Venture funding for the sector rose sharply in 2025, and what gets funded increasingly depends on when licences arrive: one rule change can remake a market.
Allocating it
Tokenized real-world assets are up roughly fourfold in the past year, excluding stablecoins. Banks already have the frameworks to hold them; insurers and pension funds, among the largest pools of capital anywhere, are still waiting for the rules that would let them.
Who's moving
-
Asset managers and banks building the products big institutions are actually allowed to hold.
- Founders timing their launches and fundraising to when licences arrive.
-
Investors and allocators sizing positions by capital treatment as much as by yield.
-
Wealth distributors deciding which of these products to offer their clients in 2027.
-
Regulators deciding how tokenised assets are treated, and who is allowed to hold them.
Technology is creating new kinds of assets and changing how markets work. The rules now decide what gets funded and who gets in, and they do not yet reach some of the biggest investors.
Talent
For the first time, AI skills are the hardest capability for employers to find, while at the other end of the ladder, AI is redefining entry-level work itself, with more than a third of junior roles now demanding the very skills that are scarcest.
Finance is rebuilding its workforce faster than it can hire one.
62%
wage premium commanded by workers with AI skills.
1 in 3
employers surveyed say they are already replacing some entry-level roles with AI.
Unemployment
In the US, the jobs gap between new graduates and all graduates is the widest since 1990.
Who's moving
-
Banks and insurers putting entire workforces through mandatory AI training.
-
Financial institutions creating new kinds of jobs around AI.
-
Graduates and early-career workers looking for a new way in, as employers move routine work to AI and entry roles demand senior-level skills.
- Governments and industry marketing talent pipelines as infrastructure.
-
Regulators making workforce capability a supervisory question, with the EU supervising staff AI literacy from August 2026.
The question is no longer just where to find the talent, but whether your workforce can change as fast as the work.
Finance is rebuilding its workforce faster than it can hire one.
62%
wage premium commanded by workers with AI skills.
1 in 3
employers surveyed say they are already replacing some entry-level roles with AI.
Unemployment
In the US, the jobs gap between new graduates and all graduates is the widest since 1990.
Who's moving
-
Banks and insurers putting entire workforces through mandatory AI training.
-
Financial institutions creating new of jobs around AI, with one in fifty staff at the biggest banks now in an AI or data role.
-
Graduates and early-career workers looking for a new way in, as employers move routine work to AI and entry roles demand senior-level skills.
- Governments and industry marketing talent pipelines as infrastructure.
-
Regulators making workforce capability a supervisory question, with the EU supervising staff AI literacy from August 2026.
The question is no longer just where to find the talent, but whether your workforce can change as fast as the work.
Talent
For the first time, AI skills are the hardest capability for employers to find. At the other end of the ladder, entry-level jobs are changing just as fast.
TALENT
For the first time, AI skills are the hardest capability for employers to find. At the other end of the ladder, entry-level jobs are changing just as fast.
Finance is rebuilding its workforce faster than it can hire one.
62%
wage premium commanded by workers with AI skills.
1 in 3
employers surveyed say they are already replacing some entry-level roles with AI.
Unemployment
In the US, the jobs gap between new graduates and all graduates is the widest since 1990.
Who's moving
-
Banks and insurers putting entire workforces through mandatory AI training.
-
Financial institutions creating new of jobs around AI, with one in fifty staff at the biggest banks now in an AI or data role.
-
Graduates and early-career workers looking for a new way in, as employers move routine work to AI and entry roles demand senior-level skills.
- Governments and industry marketing talent pipelines as infrastructure.
-
Regulators making workforce capability a supervisory question, with the EU supervising staff AI literacy from August 2026.
The question is no longer just where to find the talent, but whether your workforce can change as fast as the work.
Policy
Shifts in technology, geopolitics, capital and talent lands on terms the rulebooks set.
Several of the biggest rulebooks in finance are being rewritten at once, and the major centres are not moving in step.
Technology
AI agent safeguards arrive this year, digital-asset rules bind in the first markets with many more still being written, and post-quantum migration begins as today's encryption standards retire from 2030.
Geopolitics
Sovereignty is entering the rulebooks: chip access, where financial data may legally sit, and who supervises the rails that cross borders.
Capital
Who may hold tokenised assets is being decided sector by sector: banks are cleared, insurers and pension funds are still waiting.
Talent
Regulators are making workforce capability a supervisory question: EU supervision of staff AI literacy begins in August 2026.
Who's moving
-
Bank boards deciding where to enter and expand based on the rules as much as the market.
-
Regulators comparing regimes in real time as peers write rules for the same risks.
-
Founders and issuers reading the licensing calendar as a market-entry map.
- Risk and compliance teams building to satisfy many rulebooks at once.
-
Global firms mapping where financial data can legally sit and move.
Every part of the system is being re-regulated at once, on different clocks and sometimes in opposite directions: the rulebook, not the technology, now sets the terms.
The Festival
Get Involved
