The OMFIF Podcast

The path towards women's leadership

The representation of women in leadership, particularly in the financial sector, has been progressing over the years. This has been alongside mentorship programmes, networking platforms and career path support systems that institutions have been putting in place to advance a more equitable gender workplace. 

Shriyanka Hore, board member at London Women’s Forum, joins Andrea Correa, head of research at OMFIF, to discuss how institutional initiatives, policies and networking opportunities have shaped the path of women in leadership positions, and which areas still need support to achieve gender balance. 

Nature loss: the insurance protection blind spot

As natural disasters accelerate in both frequency and severity around the world, it is becoming increasingly difficult for insurers to provide protection to people and businesses alike. Regula Hess, financial sector engagement lead at WWF Switzerland, and Arne Holzhausen, head of outreach at Allianz Investment Management, joins Sarah Moloney, editorial director at OMFIF, to discuss the climate insurance protection gap and how it threatens global financial stability. They explore the key findings of a new white paper published by WWF. ‘Tackling the insurance protection gap: leveraging climate and nature to increase resilience’ finds that the widening gap between total economic losses after a natural disaster and the proportion that is insured is becoming a material concern for financial regulators, central banks and governments. The conversation digs into why nature loss and the degradation of ecosystems are central to the issue and looks at how the impacts go far beyond risks to property.

The emerging markets asset class amid the Middle East energy shock

Tara Hariharan, managing director and head of research at NWI Management, joins Mark Sobel, chief economist and vice chair at OMFIF to discuss emerging market investing.  They explore how to manage the volatility associated with current market volatility in light of developments in the Middle East while combining those with views and assessments of underlying EM country economic developments.

China's flailing growth model and challenges

Michael Pettis, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and co-author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace, joins Mark Sobel, chief economist and vice chair at OMFIF, to discuss the insuperable obstacles China faces in seeking to escape its wasteful investment-led growth model and instead boost consumption and services.

Unpacking sandboxes

As the new generation of financial infrastructure takes shape, the need for sophisticated tools to inform policy-makers is growing. To encourage innovation and preserve security, it is vital that policy-makers have the capacity to interact with and closely supervise new systems. Sandboxes are a key tool for this process. Carmelle Cadet, chief executive officer and founder of EmTech joins OMFIF to discuss the nuances of how sandboxes work and how they should be constructed.

Collapsing retail and wholesale for a universal CBDC

Discussions around central bank digital currencies typically begin with the intended use case. If the CBDC is for retail use, then all the subsequent discussions focus on retail, and the reverse is true for wholesale. The two are treated as separate discussions. Abbas Albasha, senior strategy consultant at Giesecke+Devrient joins Lewis McLellan, head of content at OMFIF’s Digital Monetary Institute, to discuss why this approach is too restrictive, pointing out that a single CBDC system can be designed to meet both retail and wholesale needs flexibly without need for two separate systems.

Where the risks really are in sovereign portfolios

Max Castelli, head of strategy for sovereign institutions, and Philipp Salman, director of strategy for sovereign institutions at UBS Asset Management, join Yara Aziz, senior economist at OMFIF, to discuss how shifting geopolitics shaped reserve management in 2025, and what sovereign investors should watch for in 2026. They cover the macro outlook, longer-term portfolio strategy, US concentration risk and the debate around the dollar’s role in reserves.

Spending smarter: effective allocations in public investment

In the coming year, renewed attention should be made to explore how governments can shift from simply spending more to spending smarter. Drawing on new insights from the International Monetary Fund and fresh empirical work from OMFIF and EY, we examine why productive public investment remains elusive, what distinguishes high-performing public institutions and how fiscal policies can better support high-productive investment.

 

Mark MacDonald, global public finance management leader at EY, and Galen Sheer, senior economist, fiscal affairs at the IMF, join Andrea Correa, senior economist at OMFIF, to unpack the practical reforms finance ministries can take, from improving allocative and technical efficiency to building credible evaluation systems, and offer next steps that policy-makers can act on immediately to drive better long-term outcomes.

The imperative of debt transparency

Sovereign debt scholar Anna Gelpern, Scott K. Ginsburg professor of law and international finance at Georgetown University, joins Mark Sobel, US chair at OMFIF, to discuss the theory of the case for debt transparency, the need for more and better public debt disclosure and the impact of poor disclosure on low-income countries and emerging markets.    Gelpern also explores ideas on how to tackle the challenge, and shares an update on the Sovereign Debt Forum's Public Debt Is Public project with Georgetown’s Massive Data Institute.

Sovereigns, spreads and stability in Europe

European fixed income has been 'normalising' over 2025. Inflation is stabilising, the European Central Bank has halted rates near neutral, spreads are tight but markets are steady. Yet political and fiscal divergences remain sharp within the European Union with Italian BTPs now regularly pricing through French OATs. The EU’s rapid expansion as a AAA issuer is altering Europe’s credit market structure and raising the prospect of a genuine euro safe asset.

Conor Perry, economist at OMFIF’s Economic and Monetary Policy Institute, is joined by Jeremy Cunningham, investment director at Capital Group, to examine these developments. They discuss OAT-BTP repricing, investor-base effects on yield sensitivity, the impact of unified EU issuance and the outlook for 2026.