Davos focused on resilience, but the real challenge in 2026 is operational.

Davos celebrated economic resilience. But that’s not the reality for finance teams worldwide, who still manage the daily reality of fragmented systems, delayed payments, and FX volatility that macro statistics miss entirely.

Borrowing a line from The Wizard of Oz, Kristalina Georgieva stood on stage at Davos last month and said, "We are not in Kansas anymore." The IMF Managing Director wasn't being dramatic. After what the WTO called "the biggest disruption in 80 years," the global economy has shown unexpected resilience, with 72% of trade still flowing under WTO rules and business confidence holding steady despite tariff threats and policy whiplash.

Davos is all about big ideas, so the conversations and speeches focused on macro trends and geopolitical realignment. Yet for companies operating across borders, their challenges are a little bit more tangible, and they occur day-to-day. Finance teams are performing amazing feats of agility, managing FX volatility that swings 3% before lunch, rerouting supplier payments around shifting tariff regimes, and reconciling cash positions across banking systems that operate in separate universes. Davos celebrated resilience at the macro level while saying precious little about the crisis brewing in finance departments worldwide.

Global exposure is now the default setting

The narrative at Davos assumed that businesses choose to go global, but the contemporary reality isn’t as straightforward. A software company in Berlin hires developers in Portugal and Poland because that's where the talent lives. An Australian retailer sources inventory from Vietnam and sells to customers in Singapore through a US-based platform. A Canadian manufacturer might pay suppliers in euros, invoice clients in dollars, and run payroll across four currencies.

These companies don’t necessarily set out to become international operations. They simply built a business in the last decade, and global exposure came with the territory. First, the supply chain crossed borders, then the customer base, then the workforce. Finance infrastructure, meanwhile, stayed local with a patchwork of bank accounts, payment providers, and currency services that made sense when the business operated in one market but was sub-optimal everywhere else.

Cross-border operations are now the norm. When your software subscription renews in dollars, your cloud hosting bills in euros, and your contractors invoice in five different currencies, you're operating internationally whether your business plan acknowledges it or not.

When volatility hits, finance feels it first

The Davos discussions about trade policy, monetary divergence, and international “ruptures”, as described by Mark Carney, Canada's Prime Minister, sound abstract until you're the CFO trying to move $200,000 from your UK entity to cover payroll in Singapore, and the bank needs three days plus two intermediaries to settle the transfer. Or you've locked in a supplier contract at one exchange rate, watching a 4% FX swing evaporate your margin before the goods even ship.

These ruptures show up in finance teams scrambling to hedge currency exposure they didn't have visibility into, chasing down delayed international payments that cost relationships with key suppliers, and manually reconciling transactions across disconnected systems because there's no single source of truth for their cash positions.

The IMF noted that shocks will "continue to come" with increasing frequency. Each one tests whether your finance infrastructure can keep pace, whether you have visibility into cash across markets, whether you can move money between entities in hours rather than days, and whether you can adjust FX exposure as rates shift instead of discovering losses after the fact.

Infrastructure determines execution speed

There’s room for optimism though. The companies adapting fastest to this fragmented world aren't necessarily the largest, best capitalised, or even the ones that grab all the headlines. They're the ones that have connected their financial infrastructure so execution happens in hours, instead of days.

When a new tariff regime hits, they can shift payments seamlessly as their supply chain responds. When FX rates move, they can see exposure across all entities and convert at optimal timing. When a supplier payment is due in Jakarta and cash sits in London, the money moves same-day rather than getting stuck in correspondent banking delays.

There was also a huge amount of talk about AI and investments in the technology, but there was little about the infrastructure it must operate on, especially for finance teams. AI only becomes genuinely useful when it operates on connected financial data. A treasury AI can optimise currency conversion timing, but only if it has real-time visibility into balances, upcoming payments, and FX exposure across your entire operation. Fragmented systems turn AI into expensive forecasting software. Connected infrastructure turns it into an execution engine.

The 2026 advantage lives in operations

Davos 2026 will be remembered for geopolitical theatre and policy announcements. The real story is happening in finance departments that have figured out how to turn global complexity into competitive advantage. They're not waiting three days for international transfers. They're not losing margin to FX timing they can't control. They're not building manual spreadsheets to understand their cash position.

The macro environment Georgieva described, one that’s more volatile, more fragmented, and more unpredictable, isn’t going away anytime soon. Trade will continue, as she rightly noted, because economic interdependence is built into how modern businesses operate. So, if you haven’t already, now is as good a time as any to investigate whether your finance infrastructure will be agile enough to keep up with the volatility and help you through it.

The global ambitions discussed at Davos are good headlines. Global execution is where the real work happens, the unglamorous operational reality of moving money quickly, managing currency exposure in real time, and maintaining visibility across fragmented markets. In 2026, that's where competitive advantage lives.