KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 22 — Finance professionals must adapt to a rapidly changing global landscape shaped by geopolitical shifts, climate and sustainability challenges, artificial intelligence (AI) and growing concerns over trust.

Deputy Finance Minister Liew Chin Tong said the transformation of the global environment in recent years had created new challenges for businesses and finance professionals, requiring them to rethink how financial systems and structures are designed.

“If you are the ‘architect’ of a financial structure, you cannot run away from geopolitics. This is the time for accountants to equip themselves with geopolitical and geoeconomics knowledge to deal with the challenges to come,” he said in his keynote address at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants Leadership Exchange Forum 2026.

Liew said the years ahead would be different from the period preceding 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent geopolitical conflicts transforming the global landscape.

As such, he emphasised the need for financial professionals to understand geopolitical developments worldwide, particularly as businesses face growing risks to investment, technology and supply chains.

He said supply chain resilience was one of the key issues, noting that for a long time, businesses had assumed goods would move automatically by container ships without having to consider their sources or the need for alternative sources of raw materials and what to do in the event of supply chain disruptions.

“I think these are the questions that those in the financial systems will have to ask,” said Liew.

On climate and sustainability, he said these are issues that accountants can no longer avoid, adding that the profession needs to consider ways to measure and manage them.

At the same time, he noted that accountants and businesses would need to adapt and transform their practices to maximise the benefits that AI has to offer.

The Leadership Exchange Forum, themed “Finance as Architect: Aligning Policy, Practice and Technology in the Age of AI”, brings together policymakers, finance leaders, technology experts and industry practitioners to examine how AI and data are reshaping the finance function and its role in driving business growth.

The forum will examine how finance professionals can bridge the gap between technology and human expertise while maintaining professional judgement, ethics and trust. — Bernama