By Amina Ahmad
Technology giants, philanthropy, impact investors and financial activists have a clear opportunity to restore, reclaim and redistribute economic power—not just reallocate capital—using true data-driven economic decision making.
A more imaginative approach to data is already proving the case and possibility for personalized economic systems, tailored to geographies, industries and communities, rather than mass-market financial products.
This is an opportunity to seed, structure and scale the new financial architecture that will drive true economic mobility through personalized economic systems: real-time community-located finance.
Today, most financial sector reforms are rebranded versions of traditional tools: think neo-banks through to gender-lens investing. Industry players iterate on old products, patch leaks with new tech, and label it innovation, consequently stalling the bold, transformative ideas needed to build authentic economic power.
Instead of reforming institutions that have never served us well, what if we asked a more radical question: what would a financial system look like if it started from us?
I’m inspired by the idea of building community-located finance: economic systems grounded in the realities, strengths and needs of local communities. These systems prioritize long-term wellbeing over short-term gains, legacy over quick (value-losing) exits, and collective power over profit-seeking.
My vision for financial services is an invitation to collaborate on macroeconomic change in partnership with financial activists, current systems workers, and those working on the safe transition of current financial institutions for the new economic reality. We all have a role to play in this call to real change, and I am eager to work with anyone who understands that building transformative financial services will require a reimagining of how capital flows.
Why Now?
Because the world has changed, but our financial logic hasn’t.
Chasing alpha—or chasing outsized returns—was encouraged in a near-zero-interest-rate-world designed to accelerate high risk investments and profit-seeking short-termism. But in our current reality, where climate change, social instability and resource constraints are real and urgent threats, it’s not just an outdated strategy—it’s a liability. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) estimate the global economy faces a 50% loss in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 2070-2090 due to catastrophic climate risks. Whilst the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) forecasts $38 trillion in annual damages if business as usual today does not adapt to the new climate and resource reality. Weather extremes such as wildfires and storms only serve to increase this amount, with the United States reaching an estimated $100 billion in economic costs due to extreme heat alone. Leading in financial services requires that we stop mimicking outdated strategies. Those models will not hold any meaningful long-term value. It’s a race to the wrong place. It’s time to stop chasing alpha in a changed world.
There is serious work already looking at decommissioning the current economic system because the assets underlying it cannot hold their value. For instance, the Bank of International Settlements has identified potential financial crises triggered by climate risks, labeling them “green swans,” and a consensus is forming that these risks must be removed from global financial markets to prevent systemic economic collapse. Norges, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has publicly recognised climate as a fully-fledged credit risk. We can proactively acknowledge the financial materiality of climate change, social instability and resource constraints before we have no assets of material value left to barter with. These examples aren’t theoretical; they are glimpses of what decommissioning the current economic system already looks like in practice.
Financial services that rely on outsize returns no longer fit their intended purpose of unlocking progress and underwriting innovation. And yet, the myth persists.
Meanwhile, people, especially those in the global majority, are asking for coherence, not complexity. And they are organising towards this coherence through intergovernmental organisations like BRICS, which represents 42.2% of global GDP—almost 55% of the global population. Organisations like these are already well into building systems that understand their contexts, not ones imported with colonial blueprints, and financial solutions that support healing, legacy and real opportunity, not repackaged extractive models. This is real geospatial awareness. This is true data-driven economic decision making.
What We Need Instead
The future of financial services are financial ecosystems. Financial ecosystems, including community-located finance, are systems that have moved beyond shareholder accountability and are crucial to making resource-constrained, sustainable choices that will underpin resilient financial systems. We need strategic litigation that holds corporations to account, and models like The Freedom Fund and SOMO that back it up with teeth. We need a shift from access to agency and autonomy—a parallel to positive technology activists who advocate asking not what technology does, but who technology does it to and who it does it for.
We need to restore, renew and redistribute economic power, not just reallocate capital.
This means activating the role of systemic financial institutions, large-scale endowments and tech companies in architecting regenerative, economic infrastructures that can withstand a resource-constrained future. Data doesn’t have to be extractive.
The critical missing piece to reinventing financial systems is improving data literacy. Data in financial services is consistently misunderstood and undervalued, mined only for iterations to products of the existing system.
Instead, let us imagine that data is used to provide community-located services to truly benefit customers—real-time, geospatial data that supports existing regulatory obligations of financial services providers to their customers. This might look like:
Real-time mapping of financial services provisions, including non-bank alternatives, by neighborhood. It is not enough to have a Community Development Finance Institution in an unbanked neighbourhood if it is surrounded by predatory payday lenders and betting shops, for example.
Integrating climate risk data can help prevent insurance redlining by enabling regulators to design more equitable coverage policies. With stronger data, regulators can enforce fair practices, and insurers can adjust their strategies to ensure continued protection for communities most at risk.
Supporting more accurate and equitable credit scoring, including community-level economic resilience data for small business loans.
Each of these examples illustrate what community-located data might look like in practice. And though vastly different ideas, they share a common throughline: they are grounded in context and reality, creating a more accurate picture of what is really happening for people accessing and using financial services.
This is far beyond the current use of data in financial services, where the focus is on tracking, ad targeting and other ways to continue selling the same products to the same customers.
Real systemic change is not about supporting communities with better products. It is about resourcing them at, and in, their point of need.
So, how do we get there?
To move from product-driven finance to community-located financial systems, we need to:
Make exploitative finance costly, using existing legal mechanisms and regulations to prevent mis-selling and biased practices and the enforcement of fair and responsible treatment of financial consumers. It is necessary to shift the burden of change from communities to institutions that have profited most from systemic inequality. Think Client Earth and SOMO who have deployed existing legal mechanisms to enforce corporate accountability through strategic litigation.
Fund imagination, not iteration. Let’s use the data to move beyond a product-led approach. Funding imagination demands that we resource community-led models, like Rare and Rental Rescue. Instead of using finance to make more money whilst destroying value long-term, these organizations utilize finance in service of their customers’ success and a more sustainable financial model that can grow and adapt profitability and returns well into the future.
Mobilize institutional power for systemic reinvention. Organizations who have the ambition, resources and determined mindset to lead the reinvention of economic systems must now put their money where their imagination is, ensuring a long-term resilient financial system in a resource-constrained future. Endowed funds, systemic financial institutions and technology platforms have the opportunity to market-make and resource these future financial systems.
The Path Forward
We have the legal tools. We have the policy blueprints. We even have the capital. What we need now is a collective willingness to grieve what’s no longer working and to build what might finally serve us all. Community-located finance isn’t a trend, it’s a necessity.
This is more than a call for inclusion. It’s a demand for reinvention.
Amina is an experienced early stage startup investor, having started in debt and credit lending. As an angel investor, she specialised in gender-inclusive and sustainable technology and serves as an advisor to investors and funds on capital allocation strategies for climate and social impact. She is Non Executive Director at The Social Investment Business, and a member of the Investment Committee, specialising in deploying blended finance for social impact.
An experienced leader, Amina builds strategic product and project delivery teams and is now focusing on integrating her Just Economy Institute (U.S.), School for Moral Ambition (Brussels) and Churchill (U.K.) research Fellowship learnings into her practice. She would love to hear from you if you’re building the infrastructure for the new economics of finance.
