BIS
BIS keynote: Turbulence and resilience — lessons from 2025 policy uncertainty and market stress
Published
Nov 19, 2025
Topics
Macroeconomic surveillance, Trade policy uncertainty, Inflation and monetary policy, US dollar and safe-haven assets, Gold reserves, Latin America financial conditions, Emerging market resilience
Executive Summary
The BIS published a 19 November 2025 keynote by Alexandre Tombini, Chief Representative for the Americas, reviewing how the global economy and financial markets responded to an eventful year of policy uncertainty, particularly around US tariffs and immigration controls. This is a policy speech, not a regulatory instrument, and it does not introduce binding obligations, implementation deadlines, reporting templates, or rule changes. The main supervisory-intelligence value is strategic: the BIS argues that trade-policy shocks are difficult to translate into standard business-cycle shocks, that data and market intelligence are essential for central-bank calibration, and that expected 2025 downside scenarios have not yet materialised in global growth or inflation. The speech also notes that the US dollar’s global role appears stable for now, while gold allocations and prices have risen materially. For financial institutions, the practical impact is on macro scenario design, treasury risk monitoring, country-risk assessment, and board reporting rather than regulatory compliance implementation.
What Changed
Previous
No new BIS rule or formal standard is being amended; this is a policy speech providing analysis of 2025 developments.
New
Institutions may use the speech as supervisory intelligence for scenario design and macro-financial monitoring, but it is not binding regulation.
Previous
Early-2025 forecasts discussed in the speech anticipated weaker global growth and significant inflation effects from tariff-related shocks.
New
The speech presents realised outcomes as more resilient than those pessimistic forecasts, while still noting risks from labour markets, fiscal positions, geopolitics and AI investment exuberance.
Previous
Market narratives after the April 2025 tariff announcements suggested potential weakening of US dollar dominance and US Treasuries’ safe-asset role.
New
The BIS speech characterises the dollar’s role as stable for the time being, while noting that financial markets can turn quickly.
Previous
Gold was already in a multi-year rally, according to the speech.
New
The speech frames the recent movement as potentially a tactical risk-management adjustment rather than confirmed structural abandonment of fiat reserve currencies.
Previous
The region has historically been vulnerable to macro-financial shocks, as acknowledged in the speech’s discussion of past policy-framework improvements.
New
The BIS message is that stronger frameworks have helped resilience, but fiscal consolidation and labour and product market reforms remain important policy priorities.
Business Impact
Who is affected
Directly affected
banks, insurers, asset managers, treasury functions, risk teams, economists and strategy teams using BIS speeches as macroprudential and market-intelligence inputs.
Indirectly affected
boards, ALCOs, investment committees, Latin America business units, sovereign-risk teams and clients exposed to tariff, FX, rates, commodities or emerging-market scenarios.
Jurisdictions
Global, United States, Latin America, Emerging market economies, Advanced economies
Business processes
Macroeconomic scenario design, Stress testing assumptions, Treasury and liquidity risk monitoring, FX and rates risk management, Country-risk and sovereign-risk assessment, Board and ALCO macro-risk reporting, Investment risk monitoring for gold, US Treasuries and US dollar exposures
Estimated effort
Low
Compliance risk
Low
Affected Reports
| Field | Validation rule |
|---|
Recommended Actions
- 1AI generatedStep 1 of 6
Treat the speech as non-binding regulatory intelligence; do not initiate rule-change implementation or regulatory filing changes solely from this publication.
- 2AI generatedStep 2 of 6
Review 2025 macro scenarios to ensure tariff shocks are not modelled only as generic supply or demand shocks, reflecting the BIS warning that sectoral and behavioural effects can be asymmetric.
- 3AI generatedStep 3 of 6
Update management information for ALCO and risk committees to cover US dollar, US Treasury and gold market indicators discussed in the speech.
- 4AI generatedStep 4 of 6
Reassess Latin America country-risk commentary to reflect the BIS view that regional resilience improved, while fiscal and structural reform risks remain relevant.
- 5AI generatedStep 5 of 6
Confirm that stress-testing narratives distinguish uncertainty from measurable risk where tariff ranges and policy direction have become clearer.
- 6AI generatedStep 6 of 6
Monitor official BIS publications for any subsequent formal standards, working papers or supervisory guidance that convert these analytical themes into regulatory expectations.
Timeline
other
Date not specified
The speech’s Graph 4 marks the period from “Liberation Day” through the announcement of a temporary 90-day suspension as a period of market stress.
other
Apr 1, 2025
The speech states that the US dollar was on one side of 89.2% of all trades in the BIS Triennial Survey of FX and derivatives markets.
other
Date not specified
The speech’s reserve-allocation table shows gold at 24.22% and the US dollar at 42.68% of the global stock of international reserves.
publication
Nov 19, 2025
Alexandre Tombini delivered the keynote address “Turbulence and resilience: Lessons from an eventful year” at the Central Banking Autumn Meetings in Rio de Janeiro.
Sources
AI-generated analysis is based on the following primary sources. Always verify against the official publication.
- Speech PDFBank for International SettlementsNov 19, 2025Turbulence and resilience: Lessons from an eventful year ↗
https://www.bis.org/speeches/20251119-turbulence-and-resilience-lessons-eventful-year_1.pdf
Related Evidence
Verified source support for this analysis
The evidence agent checks whether the drafted finding is supported by official publications and relevant public source material.
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