Geopolitical risks increasingly dominate CFOs’ list of concerns

Greenland. Venezuela. Iran. And a healthy dose of trade disputes to boot. Geopolitical conflicts and tensions have dominated headlines—and world leaders’ headspace—in recent months.

CFOs haven’t stood idly by while all this volatility unfolded. Finance executives are concerned about geopolitical risks and are likely trying to control what they can internally to weather the storm, according to McKinsey’s latest CFO Pulse survey.

The online survey of 152 global financial leaders, conducted in late 2025, found that 37% of respondents identified geopolitical instability or conflicts and 32% indicated changes in trade policies or relationships “as the biggest risks to their companies’ growth” over the next year.

Specifically, CFOs’ biggest geopolitical concerns were tariffs and other trade barriers, domestic industrial policies, and technology and cybersecurity. “Taken together, these external pressures are likely compelling CFOs to control what they can by closely tracking performance, stress testing their plans, and ensuring their companies can adjust without abandoning long-term strategies,” the consulting firm noted.

Among the actions they planned to take in the next 12 months, CFOs most often cited increasing cash and liquidity buffers, planning for expansion or diversification into new markets, and optimizing supply networks.

Zoom out. There’s a cost to geopolitical volatility, as CFO Brew previously reported. Yet there may only be so much businesses can do beyond their own walls to mitigate these risks, experts suggest.

According to Henry Wilkinson, chief intelligence officer at Dragonfly, who spoke with CFO Brew earlier this year, those potential costs include disrupted supply chains, regulatory obstacles, and more time and resources spent on addressing evolving risks.

In a February report from global graduate business school INSEAD,, 64% of faculty members said geopolitical crises were the “the leading threat to business,” according to authors Francisco Veloso and Peter Joos, INSEAD dean and deputy dean.

Yet only a quarter of INSEAD faculty said geopolitics was a top area for businesses to address, a 10 percentage-point drop from last year and a possible indication that “we might be seeing limits to what business can realistically do to mitigate these ongoing tensions and disputes,” according to the report.