International: 2025 – What's on the radar for financial institutions

In brief

With 2024 now behind us, our Baker McKenzie Financial Institutions lawyers look ahead at the potential disruptors impacting the sector in 2025. This year promises continuing change driven by geopolitical events, technological advances and regulatory developments. Financial institutions must prepare not only to manage the risks but to benefit from the opportunities.

Our report, 2025: What's on the Radar for Financial Institutions?, gives an overview of the challenges facing the sector, and updates risk radars on fintech and digital transformation, sustainability and regulatory scrutiny, which describe the trends, developments and associated risks affecting financial services.


Contents

Comments

In 2025, geopolitical events, technological advances, and regulatory developments will drive continuous transformation.

  • Governments are increasingly using financial sanctions to achieve foreign policy goals, ramping up enforcement.
  • Emerging technologies are introducing innovative financial products, promising productivity gains while creating new vulnerabilities.
  • New regulations aim to govern these technologies and, for example, control third-country access to financial markets, and strengthen prudential rules. Sustainability regulation continues to develop albeit subject to regional divergence.
  • In alternative finance, after a slow 2024, pressure is building for divestitures, while sponsors seek new fundraising. Private debt investors are focusing on resilient industries with good creditworthiness.
  • Tax remains an area to watch as governments target large businesses, private equity, and high-net-worth individuals to close revenue gaps, with increasing tax transparency measures and new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) rules.
  • Financial institutions must not only manage these risks but also seize the opportunities. Join our experts as they explore what 2025 holds for the financial sector.

In more detail

Click here to read our full report.


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