News Summary

• 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.
• 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.
• Their resolution is not yet clear, and their resolution will require adaptation.