From Lagging Indicators to Daily Intelligence: Rethinking Country Risk
From armed conflict to political upheaval, geopolitical events are unfolding daily - and they're directly impacting investments and counterparties in these locations. Yet most traditional country risk metrics are produced infrequently on a lag, leading many firms to rely on manual monitoring of news and social media.
Join Bloomberg and Seerist as we introduce a newly launched dataset that replaces guesswork with grounded, daily intelligence. Powered by expert political analyst insight and AI, this data delivers country-level geopolitical risk scores and ratings tied directly to companies' country of risk - enabling risk and investment teams to monitor how fast-moving developments are impacting businesses on the ground.
Whether you're comparing counterparties or recalibrating investment decisions, this session will show how to seamlessly integrate geopolitical risk data into your workflow - so you're not only aware of global events as they unfold, but able to confidently quantify their impact.
Global Head of Risk & Investment Analytics Products
Bloomberg
Zane Van Dusen is the Global Head of Risk & Investment Analytics Products at Bloomberg. Zane began this role in 2019 and under his leadership, the group has become one of the industry's top data analytics providers, supplying innovative risk metrics, such as Bloomberg's award-winning Liquidity Assessment solution (LQA), based on Bloomberg's vast database of market data. Zane works with quants and engineers to build data-driven analytics that address a wide range of client needs from investment research to portfolio construction to regulatory reporting. Prior to this role, Zane managed the implementation of risk management, stress testing and reporting systems for Credit Suisse's Treasury and Liquidity Risk Management groups for over a decade. Prior to this role, Zane managed the implementation of risk management, stress testing and reporting systems for Credit Suisse's Treasury and Liquidity Risk Management groups for over a decade.
Victoria Cardwell
Head of Sales
Seerist
Victoria Cardwell brings two decades of experience at the intersection of geopolitical risk and commercial strategy. At Seerist, she leads sales to commercial and international government entities who need to monitor, analyse and anticipate security, political and operational risks. Throughout her career, Victoria has built and scaled teams to support clients across a broad range of sectors—including finance, insurance, energy, technology, and manufacturing—helping them navigate volatile environments by building risk intelligence technology into their operations. Victoria spent 8 years at Control Risks as Partner of Global Online Solutions, and previously held roles include at Jane's and IHS Markit (now S+P). Throughout her career she has focused on delivering intelligence as SaaS, for macro-economic as well as geopolitical and security datasets. Victoria holds a Master's degree in War Studies from King's College London and studied at Durham University.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
21 minutes ago
- Forbes
8 Non-Obvious Reasons Startups Struggle To Fundraise
This article outlines eight less obvious but highly influential reasons startups fail to raise ... More capital — reasons investors notice even when founders don't. Most founders are familiar with the typical reasons why fundraising is challenging: a poor pitch, a small market, a weak team, or a lack of traction. But many funding struggles come from less visible issues - structural, strategic, or psychological problems that don't always show up in a pitch deck. In this article, we outline eight less obvious but highly influential reasons startups fail to raise capital. 1. The Vision Is Too Small Startups often describe what they're building today, not what it could become. A narrow, tactical story may be logical, but investors look for ambition. They want to know: if this works, how big could it be? The reason is simple - startup investors take a large number of high-risk bets. For their investment strategy to work, the successful investments need to be able to pay for multiple unsuccessful ones. In other words, for traditional startup investors, 1.5 ROI simply doesn't make economic sense. A product that solves a clear problem but doesn't hint at a broader market, ecosystem, or category-defining potential is easy to pass on. Founders need to cast a vision that stretches beyond their MVP without sounding delusional. For example, Zoom wasn't just 'video calls with better UI'. It pitched itself as the next platform for enterprise communication, and currently it's pitching itself as 'The AI-first work platform for human connection'. As noted in our startup fundraising checklist, articulating a compelling long-term vision is one of the most important elements of a successful early-stage fundraising strategy. Founders need to help investors imagine what happens if everything goes right — and what the business could become at scale. 2. No Clear 'Why Now' Timing matters. Investors often ask: Why hasn't this worked before, and why will it work now? If your pitch doesn't answer that, it feels like a stale idea. Sometimes, a startup idea is too early - or worse, not early enough. Founders who explain the shift (tech, regulation, behavior, distribution) that now makes their idea viable tend to stand out. For example, Uber only became viable when smartphones and GPS were widely adopted. That was their 'why now.' 3. Lack Of A Founder-Problem Fit Even if the idea is good, investors want to see why you are the person to build it. Founders often fail to show authentic founder-problem fit - a personal connection to the problem, or an unfair advantage in solving it. Generic motivations or vague enthusiasm can undermine otherwise strong pitches. Investors fund people more than ideas. For example, Brex's founders had previously built a fintech company in Brazil ( That experience gave them credibility and insight into building financial products. 4. No Clear Wedge Into the Market A huge market is good. But a startup that tries to tackle the entire market at once often fails to show how it gets its first 1,000 users. A 'wedge' is a focused, practical entry point into a larger opportunity. Without it, founders sound like they're boiling the ocean. For example, Slack started as an internal chat tool for the team that built it, which at the same time was working on a video game. After focusing on Slack, they provided the service to teams with similar profiles to theirs. That was their wedge. 5. Too Many Assumptions Without Evidence Many early-stage startups pitch ideas based on logic, but without proof. If you haven't talked to enough customers, tested demand, or shown willingness to kill assumptions, it shows. Investors don't need traction to write early checks, but they do need evidence of rigor: signals that you're testing, learning, and adapting. 6. The Team Doesn't Look Fundable Investors will rarely say this out loud, but team dynamics matter, especially in early rounds. Red flags include unclear roles between co-founders, a lack of technical depth for a technical product, or no one with go-to-market experience. Teams that look too homogeneous (e.g., all engineers or all generalists) raise concerns. The best early teams balance strong execution with learning speed and a sense of complementary skills. Consider adding a technical advisor, domain expert, or experienced operator if your team has a visible gap. 7. The Deck Doesn't Show А Business Many decks describe a product, but not a company. There's a big difference. Investors want to see how the product becomes a business: acquisition channels, pricing strategy, retention drivers, and competitive advantage. Especially in founder-led seed rounds, it's easy to underplay these topics. But smart investors will dig, and if your unit economics or GTM strategy is vague, you'll lose momentum. A basic revenue model, even if it's mostly assumptions, shows you're thinking like a builder and an operator. 8. Fundraising Looks Like a Backup Plan If it feels like you're fundraising only because other options failed - e.g., you couldn't bootstrap or get acquired - it signals a lack of confidence. Investors want to back people who are raising because they believe funding accelerates their vision, not because they ran out of cash.
Bloomberg
27 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Rieder Favors Equities Over Long Duration Bonds
BlackRock Global Fixed Income CIO Rickk Rieder favors equities over long duration bonds. He explains the call on "Bloomberg ETF IQ." (Source: Bloomberg)
Entrepreneur
33 minutes ago
- Entrepreneur
What You Need to Know Before You Sign Another Contract
From managing risk to maximizing revenue, standardized sales contracts are a strategic tool that helps create efficiencies and collaboration between sales and legal departments. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. For growing companies, especially those navigating long-term service contracts, standardized sales contracts are more than paperwork ... they're a strategic tool for managing risk and maximizing revenue. Yet many organizations still suffer from costly inconsistencies, miscommunication between teams and untracked contract terms that result in lost income and avoidable legal exposure. Gone are the days of contracts scribbled on napkins. Modern contract management relies on formal processes and documentation. Here are some insights for a proactive approach to contract standardization, starting with bridging the gap between the sales and legal teams. Related: 5 Simple, Proven Ways to Improve Contract Management 1. Contracts are risk management and revenue tools At their core, contracts are commitments. That means they're just as much about risk management as they are about revenue generation. If your sales team over-promises — perhaps offering more services than your team can deliver or ignoring necessary protections like indemnification clauses — they could expose your business to legal liability or reputational harm. On the revenue side, failing to include pricing escalators in multi-year contracts or not tracking tiered pricing models accurately can leave serious money on the table. In my experience, a contract without proper safeguards and missing price escalators is a legal minefield fraught with exposure for an entire organization from sales to legal operations. Key takeaway: You must know what's in the contract and ensure the whole organization knows it, too. 2. Cross-team visibility prevents pitfalls One of the biggest pain points in many organizations is a lack of inter-departmental communication. The sales team might know a contract was signed, but legal, finance or operations may not understand the terms the sales team and client agreed to. Without standardized language and a clear handoff process, your business risks: Missed automatic price increases Non-compliance with service level agreements Poor customer experience due to internal misalignment Best practice: Make the contract visible and actionable across departments, not just sales and legal, but also finance, customer success and operations. 3. Technology enables contract lifecycle management (CLM) Platforms like Salesforce, when integrated with CLM tools, can streamline contract creation, negotiation, approval and execution. With the right setup: Salespeople can pull up the most up-to-date, approved templates Any clause edits or exceptions trigger automatic notifications to legal for review and approval Clause libraries ensure that common provisions, like indemnification, are standardized Legal doesn't need to review every deal from scratch This reduces friction for sales reps eager to close a deal while ensuring legal safeguards for the organization at large remain intact. Related: 6 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Client Contracts 4. Create incentives for legal-sales collaboration Salespeople's primary function within an organization is to generate revenue and drive business growth, but that shouldn't come at the expense of your company's legal position. By incentivizing collaboration with legal, you can turn contract compliance into a shared goal. Ideas to consider: Tie part of commissions to contract accuracy and compliance with certain legal mandates. Provide legal-approved "talking points" to the sales team to address clients' questions or attempts to negotiate key provisions. Offer training so the salesperson or team understands the rationale behind key clauses (e.g., indemnification from all but gross negligence) Ensure accessibility of legal team to provide timely support to sales team. This builds a culture of shared accountability, rather than bottlenecks or blame. 5. Give your team the right language Legal teams can empower sales by equipping them with scripts and tools to handle tough conversations. For example, if a client's attorney wants to revise an indemnity clause, sales should be prepared with: A clear explanation of why the clause exists A summary of what flexibility, if any, is allowed Guidance on when to escalate to legal Idea: Require your legal department to create standardized messaging for sales reps so they can confidently represent the organization's position without overstepping. Related: Do You Know Where Your Contracts Are Standardizing contracts isn't just about reducing paperwork; it's about creating sustainable growth. When contracts are uniform, enforceable and visible across your organization, you're better positioned to avoid risk, capture full revenue and scale smoothly. If you're still relying on ad hoc contract editing and siloed communication, it's time to rethink the process. The return on investment for collaboration between sales and legal isn't just compliance; it's peace of mind and profit.
