Closing Address: Beyond Risk and Resilience: Unlocking Europe's Competitive Edge Midst Rising Geoeconomic Tensions
Marine Krasovska — Bank of Latvia
Current financial ecosystems face persistent geopolitical, cybersecurity, and technological fragmentation risks, notably between fiat and digital assets, including evolving AI outpacing regulation. Ensuring European fintech resilience transcends traditional compliance, demanding aligned regional strategies, enhanced interoperability, and embedding digital trust from inception. The fintech sector must prioritize always-on infrastructure, collaboration across public-private sectors, and cyber risk management centered on internal vulnerabilities. Future competitiveness hinges on integrating risk and trust management within business models to withstand disruptions, emphasizing flexibility coupled with robust regulatory adaptation and coordinated innovation frameworks.
"Our new reality is just a default setting, like on your phone—it is here to stay. Resilience alone is not enough; we must build long-term competitive edge where security, availability, and fintech leadership are in place to compete as Europe."
Summary
- Financial sector faces new default reality of uncertainty, geopolitical risks, and faster AI evolution than regulation. - Digital assets and fiat currencies remain fragmented, causing challenges for central bankers and cybersecurity. - Europe must focus on building resilience, trust, and competitive fintech leadership beyond individual countries. - Fintechs depend heavily on banking infrastructure, requiring always-available financial services and stronger collaboration. - New regulations like Adora and Mica present opportunities for innovation; cybersecurity and interdependency demand shared strategies.
Article
European fintech sector must build trust beyond compliance to remain competitive, warns regulator
Marine Krasovska delivers stark message on geopolitical risks at Nordic Fintech Summit
In an era defined by geopolitical tensions and technological fragmentation, Europe's fintech industry must move beyond mere resilience to build lasting competitive advantage through trust and continuous service, according to a leading financial regulator.
Speaking at the Nordic Fintech Summit in May 2025, Marine Krasovska delivered a sobering closing address that challenged the optimism pervading the two-day event, urging financial technology companies to face a new reality where uncertainty is "the default setting."
"AI is evolving faster than regulation and compliance teams, creating new challenges in the financial sector," Krasovska told attendees, highlighting that traditional focus areas like credit and liquidity risk management have been supplanted by more urgent concerns around cybersecurity and geopolitical tensions.
From compliance to competitive resilience
Throughout her address, Krasovska emphasised that European fintech companies must shift their approach from viewing resilience as a regulatory requirement to seeing it as a fundamental competitive advantage in an increasingly fragmented global landscape.
"Fintechs are no longer an option; they must build resilient, always-on financial infrastructure to survive and thrive," she said, pointing to the heavy dependence of fintech companies on traditional banking systems.
The speech identified a critical paradox at the heart of fintech innovation: while flexibility remains a key strength of disruptive financial technologies, this must now be balanced with unwavering service reliability.
"Flexibility is a competitive advantage for fintechs, but matching it with resilience and continuous service availability is crucial," Krasovska noted, adding that in today's landscape, "availability equals security."
Fragmentation threatens European competitiveness
A central theme of the address was the persistent fragmentation hampering European fintech development, which manifests at multiple levels – from the technological divide between fiat and digital assets to the misalignment of national fintech strategies across the continent.
Krasovska highlighted that despite common frameworks like SEPA, PSD2, and emerging regulations such as DORA and MiCA, European countries continue to pursue largely uncoordinated fintech development strategies.
"If we want a strong, competitive Europe, we need more alignment," she argued, suggesting that the Baltic-Nordic region could lead by example in developing more integrated approaches to regulatory sandboxes, stress testing, and API standardisation.
Building digital trust from day one
Perhaps most significantly, Krasovska challenged fintech leaders to integrate trust as a foundational element of their business models, rather than as an afterthought.
"Digital trust should be integrated from day one in a fintech's business model to build customer confidence and ensure security," she stated, underscoring that as fintech services become more essential to daily financial activities, service disruptions impact not just individual companies but raise questions about the stability of the entire financial system.
The presentation highlighted that cybersecurity vulnerabilities often come from within organisations rather than external attacks, emphasising the importance of cultivating strong internal risk management cultures.
Collaboration across all levels becomes essential
In her closing remarks, Krasovska stressed that no single fintech company or even country can adequately address the challenges of an increasingly complex and interdependent financial ecosystem.
"Collaboration at all levels—digital, infrastructure, public, and private—is a must to manage interdependencies and build a resilient financial system," she concluded.
The speech offered a framework for how European fintechs might strengthen their position amid rising geopolitical tensions – not through size or volume, but through superior trust and resilience coupled with the ability to recover rapidly from inevitable disruptions.
As the Nordic Fintech Summit concluded, Krasovska's address left attendees with a challenging homework assignment: to design financial systems and business models from the ground up with the expectation that they will be tested by risks, disruptions, and geopolitical shifts.
In an industry often focused on disruption and growth, her message centered on a more fundamental value proposition – that Europe's competitive advantage in global finance may ultimately lie in becoming the most trusted and resilient financial ecosystem in an increasingly uncertain world.
Part of Nordic Fintech Summit