Andrea Ruberto is a risk management professional with over 20 years of experience in traditional and alternative investment strategies. He combines technical knowledge with a pragmatic approach to regulatory compliance.
Interview with our trainer about the new Geopolitical Risk Management for Investment Funds module
Geopolitical awareness is becoming a real asset for fund professionals. What inspired you to design this training, and what value do you think it brings to the industry today?
Risk management has evolved from a narrow, compliance-driven discipline into an integrated, interdisciplinary one. Twenty years ago, the focus was on isolated economic and financial risks; today, it has to cover interconnected global risks such as ESG and sustainability risks, AI and technology risks, and geopolitical risks.
The ECB/ESRB joint report Financial Stability Risks from Geoeconomic Fragmentation, published in January 2026, puts it plainly: geoeconomic fragmentation and persistent geopolitical uncertainty have become key sources of macro-financial uncertainty, and geopolitical risks have risen markedly since the mid-2010s with notable increases in 2024 and 2025.
The added value of this training is to give participants a structured way of translating geopolitical developments into exposures, concentrations and scenarios, so that geopolitics stops being commentary and becomes an input into portfolio construction and risk governance.
The training programme helps participants identify material geopolitical risk exposures. How can this understanding help fund managers make calmer, better-informed decisions?
As Joachim Klement puts it, “nine out of ten geopolitical events don’t matter to investors, but the tenth does”. Better decisions start with separating signal (i.e. material risks) from noise.
Most geopolitical shocks have only a short-term impact on markets, as risk premia temporarily increase; however, they have a long-term impact when they persistently and significantly affect fundamentals (e.g., real risk-free rates, inflation expectations, risk premia, expected cash flows).
Resilient portfolios are those built with clarity around their actual risk exposures. A company’s country of incorporation, for instance, reveals little about its geopolitical country risk. What really matters in this case is (non-exhaustive list):
Countries where the company runs its operations and where its assets are located;
Countries where its key suppliers run their operations and where their assets are located;
Countries where the company earns its revenue.
Could you share an example of how a good understanding of geopolitical dynamics can help professionals better position different asset classes or investment strategies?
Geopolitical risk affects every asset class, but not in the same way. The same event can create risk in one sleeve of a portfolio and opportunity in another.
Consider for instance a tightening of export controls on advanced semiconductors:
Listed equity: repricing is immediate and runs through expected earnings;
Private credit: the effect surfaces in the borrower's covenant headroom and refinancing capacity;
Infrastructure: change-in-law clauses, pass-through and tariff indexation, and political risk cover determine whether the concession absorbs the shock or passes it on.
The aim is never to predict a future event but rather to know in advance which sleeve absorbs it, which one reprices, and on what timeline.
How can integrating geopolitical risk into the risk framework help risk managers, compliance officers and board members work together more effectively and with more confidence?
Geopolitical risk is a cross-cutting driver that transmits into market, credit, counterparty, liquidity, sustainability, valuation, operational, compliance and governance risk.
Integration gives the three functions a shared vocabulary and a clear split of tasks and responsibilities: the board sets strategy and risk appetite; risk management monitors geopolitical risk exposures against those limits; compliance owns sanctions, where duties sit with both the fund and the IFM.
Participants will explore the Market-Driven Scenarios (MDS) framework for stress testing. What practical skills or tools will they be able to put to use in their organisation right after the training?
Originally developed by BlackRock, the MDS framework is designed to mitigate the highly subjective nature of hypothetical scenario generation. The added value of such a formal scenario construction process is to force risk takers and risk managers to think explicitly about the severity, plausibility and consistency of their assumptions, and to add transparency.
For an IFM, the most direct route to integrate geopolitical risk is through their existing portfolio P&L stress testing framework. The training is built around a workflow participants can run on their own funds. Back at the office, that translates into building a library of 5–10 severe-but-plausible geopolitical scenarios. Participants also leave with the right questions for delegated portfolio managers and risk vendors.
Information and registration about the Geopolitical Risk Management for Investissement Funds module
