Editorial

Field Notes: Financial Services

Field Notes on geopolitical risk in financial services: sanctions screening, payments, capital flows and central bank moves, written for CROs and compliance leads.

Financial ServicesSector

Banks, sanctions, payments and capital flows.

Supplier Risk Management Has a Blind Spot: The Supplier's Own Government

COSCO spent a year trying to turn a minority stake in a Panama ports deal into majority control. No credit check would have flagged that risk before it surfaced.

Shekhar Attri · October 25, 2026

What Prices Move First When Geopolitical Risk Hits Financial Markets

War-risk insurance on Red Sea tankers jumped from 0.3% to over 1% of hull value in three days after a July 2026 Houthi blockade declaration, weeks before sovereign credit spreads moved.

Shekhar Attri · September 1, 2026

What Geoeconomic Fragmentation Actually Costs a Company

The IMF now describes a multipolar trading system in its own outlook. For a company, that shows up as a customs hold, a payment routed through an extra bank, and two compliance calendars for one product.

Jay Bimbrah · August 31, 2026

Secondary Sanctions: Not the Target, Still Exposed

In April 2026 the U.S. Treasury designated a Chinese refinery and forty shipping firms that had never touched a U.S. bank account. That is what secondary sanctions are built to do.

Jay Bimbrah · August 31, 2026

Difference Between Country Risk and Geopolitical Risk: The Unit of Analysis Problem

Fitch upgraded Egypt's credit rating in November 2024, the same month the Suez Canal was losing more than half its revenue to Red Sea attacks. Two different questions, two different answers.

Shekhar Attri · August 31, 2026

Correspondent Banking Risk: The Quiet Map of Who Gets Cut Off

A four-year study found exporting firms lost 57 percent of export revenue after their correspondent bank account closed. The exposure sits inside a payment corridor a treasury team never chose.

Shekhar Attri · August 23, 2026

The Geopolitical Sanctions Gap: Why Periodic Trade Compliance Reviews Miss What Real-Time Tracking Catches

OFAC gave companies exposed to Rosneft and Lukoil a single 30-day wind-down window in 2025. A quarterly compliance review would have missed the deadline before it started.

Jay Bimbrah · August 10, 2026

What Insurance Markets Price Before Analysts Publish: War-Risk Premiums as a Geopolitical Intelligence Signal

Lloyd's repriced Hormuz war-risk within 48 hours of March 2026 airstrikes. Published analysis took days. Insurance markets are a leading geopolitical intelligence signal that most risk functions are not monitoring.

Jay Bimbrah · July 20, 2026