Humph, the new year starts for real this week; back to work and back to school. Like champagne, cold, fizzy, refreshing on New Years’ eve – already opened warm and flat it, the next day, somehow does not seem quite so exciting. Yet, here we are and before the craziness really starts next week it is a good time to look at 2023 predictions.
This year the number of papers forecasting 2023 seems to have exploded somewhat. Saxo Bank, for example, produces a set of ‘outrageous’ predictions, which are always interesting, and I have pasted a list of all the various papers that may be useful at the bottom of this post. (with credit and thanks to Anthony Cheung and Chris Skinner for sharing links to many of the papers).
I have highlighted, in Bold and with ***, those I found particularly interesting and more digestible… and if you want to join in a conversation on this I have also added them on the RO-AR.com Discord Server, you are welcome to join, access here.
2023 optimism
I am really trying to stay fairly optimistic for 2023, although looking through the various papers this has been hard. Let’s just say the outlook is not great, economic recession, global conflict, and a run-on from the worsening situation in 2022 seemed to dominate, albeit with some interesting bright spots in tech and data.
So, I am not going to make predictions this year. (although the last time I did, in 2020, I did not do too bad although some were way off the mark, so better to stay clear).
Instead, with all this uncertainty, it felt is was worth concentrating on what are some key themes to watch to see how the year will unfold…. thoughts as follows.
Increasing Geo-Political Conflict. The war in Ukraine came as a shock last year, it still continues with seemingly little prospect of ending soon and precipitating economic stress across the globe. In the background, there are now also new geopolitical flash points between China-Taiwan, and Serbia-Kosovo. All of this could put further, and more dramatic stress on supply chains and western economies. Watch carefully. Be prepared and resilient for any changes.
Increasing unemployment and levels of arrears. We are already seeing high levels of inflation, higher energy, and food costs in the economy together with the full impact of interest rate increases still to come. However, despite this, levels of arrears and unemployment have both remained at relatively low levels, for now. There are some small indicators this may be changing though and it is a situation that needs to continue to be monitored closely. Should the situation change and people’s incomes change, the prospect of servicing any debt becomes difficult and levels of financial difficulties will escalate rapidly. Look for small signs to assess the speed this trend is developing.
Political power trumping financial power. With finances stretched, governments are under increasing pressure to raise revenue. New taxes are likely in areas that are politically popular at the expense of those that are financially powerful. Examples already include taxes on empty homes and windfall taxes… We should expect more of this to come, in increasingly diverse forms. This will likely change market dynamics and many an accepted status quo. Watch for these changes to stay ahead, anticipate trends, and adapt.
Embedding Augmented Intelligence (AI). Although generative AI and AI have been around for a while, ChatGPT was a particularly interesting development at the end of last year. The concept of getting the machine to do the heavy lifting really seemed to reach a critical mass… It will be interesting to see, that now we can easily provide more information, at a low cost, what will this mean for our processes (and for customers). By way of example, look what happened in computer coding… we had wide availability of computing power at low cost… yet it didn’t necessarily result in more efficient code, in fact, quite the opposite… will this happen with AI. So, watch for more embedded AI and automated (and maybe verbose) interaction to come. Efficiency and good process design could be a competitive advantage.
New economic business models become the norm. Whatever your views on the current wave of unrest in the economy are it does seem that in some sectors the traditional action of withdrawing labour is having only muted effect compared to the past. On rail strike days – people grumble, and then work from home, postal strike days – we send emails or slack messages, and life goes on. Have changes from the pandemic, reduced their impact? Is there reduced bargaining power as a result? … and, does this actually reflect a wider more fundamental change to the economy itself? With nurses (also on strike) and the NHS is in a different situation, we should watch to see how prolonged the action is by sector/industry… it could be in some ways a comment on our changing economy too. Watch to understand how and when our economy is changing, an indicator for informing future business models
The rise of new industries and consolidation of old ones. With increasing inflation and cost of living, the search for value is on. Old ways of doing things, with their old cost structures and pricing, will be under-pressure and new ways of working/interacting given life. In many ways, this process has already started, but process transformation is going to be back on the agenda and critical to stay ahead. Watch for more market consolidation (economies of scale) and purely digital business models (same or less service for same or less cost), to stay ahead.
Other: Also also don’t write Blockchain, the Metaverse or Twitter off just yet!
It is going to be an interesting year… hopefully a good one… but, watch closely to see. Welcome back, everyone.
If you are looking for a good summary of expected developments for 2023 in Credit and Collections, Kevin Still’s paper*** is a good place to start. Recommended.
All the other links are below.
- Accenture***
- Alverez & Marsal***
- Andreessen Horowitz
- Apollo Global Management, Inc.
- Arca Funds
- Bank of America
- Barclays
- Binance
- BlackRock***
- Bloomberg
- BNP Paribas
- BNY Mellon
- Citi
- Coinbase
- CoinDesk
- Cointelegraph
- Credit Suisse
- Crypto.com
- Deloitte***
- Delphi Digital
- Deutsche Bank
- Ernst and Young***
- Fidelity International
- Forbes
- Gartner***
- Goldman Sachs
- HSBC
- Huobi Research
- ING***
- J.P. Morgan
- Lazard
- Messari
- Morgan Stanley
- NatWest
- New Order DAO
- Pantera Capital
- PwC
- Saxo Bank***
- UBS
- VanEck
- Wells Fargo
