How public funds are addressing physical risk

Max Castelli, head of strategy for sovereign institutions at UBS Asset Management, joins Yara Aziz, senior economist at OMFIF, to discuss the future of the dollar in the global financial system. They explore UBS’s latest Reserve Management Survey findings, the dollar's resilience, the rise of gold, digital currencies and whether any challengers are truly positioned to take the dollar’s place.

Today’s tighter fiscal position around the world is pushing governments to find alternatives to finance their current expenditure and public investments, forcing them to think differently about how they fund and deliver essential services. Dean Yates, regional market segment leader in government and health sciences, Oceania, at EY, and Rainer Kattel, deputy director and professor of innovation and public governance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, join Andrea Correa, senior economist at OMFIF, to explore what it takes to make public investment work. They discuss the government's position and trade-offs around public investment, how to prioritise and measure investments for long-term impact and the role of innovation and governance in delivering value across health, education and infrastructure.

Richard Manley, chief sustainability officer at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, joins Yara Aziz, senior economist at OMFIF, to discuss the key findings from a jointly published report, ‘Investing in a changing world: How public funds are addressing climate-related physical risks’. They explore the challenges public funds face in managing physical risk and where they see opportunities to build resilience.

Questions about the long-term viability of the dollar as the world’s supreme transaction and investment currency have been building up for years. But America’s chaotic foreign, economic and trade policies in the six months since Donald Trump returned to the White House have intensified doubts about whether the US currency will stay the course for the longer term. Will the US be knocked off its monetary pedestal in the next five years? And which currencies are in the running as the most potent rivals to the dollar?   Ellie Groves, head of strategy, official institutions group at State Street Investment Management, and David Marsh, chairman of OMFIF, debate the pros and cons of the dollar and other leading currencies, with reference to some of the themes in David’s new book, Can Europe Survive? The Story of a Continent in a Fractured World.

Although it frequently flies under the radar, ensuring central bank digital currencies are able to be used at point-of-sale is vital to their successful adoption.   Lars Hupel, chief evangelist for CBDC at Giesecke+Devrient, joins Lewis McLellan, head of content at OMFIF's Digital Monetary Institute, to discuss integrating CBDCs at point-of-sale, the strategic and economic benefits it will bring and the appropriate incentive structures to encourage it.   You can find more information in a paper authored by Lars Hupel, which unveils the world of CBDC wallets and their various forms. It illustrates different methods to initiate payments and crafts a conceptual model for point-of-sale transactions, designed with the specific features of retail CBDCs in mind. 

Max Castelli, head of strategy for sovereign institutions at UBS Asset Management, joins Yara Aziz, economist at OMFIF, to unpack the global reserve response after 2 April – a date proclaimed by President Donald Trump as Liberation Day. They dive into US policy shifts, the dollar’s evolving role, rising demand for gold and whether Europe is finally ready to take the lead. 

Zain Saidin, chief executive officer of Tassat, joins editor of OMFIF's Digital Monetary Institute, Lewis McLellan, to discuss the value of private blockchain networks for regulated finance.   The discussion covers how the transparency typical of public blockchains may present trade-offs where counterparties want to know each other but cannot know each other's trading behaviour. They also discuss Lynq – a real-time yield-bearing settlement network for digital assets, sitting on a private institutional network.

Ahead of the Blue Economy and Finance Forum taking place on 7-8 June 2025, Louise Heaps, Global Lead Sustainable Blue Economy, and Maud Abdelli, Greening Financial Regulation Initiative Lead at the Worldwide Fund for Nature, join OMFIF's Isabella Frymoyer to explore how financial institutions can advance ocean sustainability. The conversation highlights the key priorities, challenges and tools needed to scale investment in the blue economy, ultimately outlining the importance of encouraging blue sustainable growth.

Jonathan Griffiths, senior investment specialist at Capital Group, joins Arunima Sharan, senior economist at OMFIF’s Economic and Monetary Policy Institute, to unpack Capital Group’s 2025 Capital Market Assumptions and explore perspectives for institutional investors navigating an increasingly complex global investment landscape. They discuss themes ranging from opportunities in emerging market, to fixed income strategies and currency outlooks over the next two decades.

Instant payments systems are proliferating rapidly, and many central banks are working hard on interlinking them to enable quick, efficient cross-border payments. However, while IPS can provide extremely rapid, low-cost payments, they are not immune to fraud and erroneous payments. Given the speed of settlement, these problems can be even more difficult to resolve than they are for other payments systems.   Petia Niederländer, head of payments, risk monitoring and financial literacy at Oesterreichische Nationalbank, and Cian OMurhu, managing director and head of strategic transformation office at Swift, join Lewis McLellan, editor of OMFIF’s Digital Monetary Institute, to discuss the technical infrastructure required to address these issues, how they are being implemented and what work still needs to be done.