Preparing for a dramatically different future

TO QUOTE Singapore's Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam from his national address last month, "the future begins now".

That future will be dramatically different not only for governments and individuals, but also for big business and big finance. What Covid-19 has done is accelerate the disruption already heralded by the fourth industrial revolution and demographic trends, and underscore the urgency required to address systemic vulnerabilities.

The global economy was not exactly fighting fit when this tragic pandemic hit us. The trade war between the United States and China had only just entered a form of awkward truce, the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank had already started reversing their interest rate hiking cycle, and the International Monetary Fund's growth forecasts had already undergone multiple downgrades.