Third-Party Failures Are Coming and Climate Risk Will Be the Trigger

Merlin Linehan, a senior risk leader at the EBRD, pulls back the curtain on a growing threat few in financial services are taking seriously enough: climate-driven disruption to third-party providers. Linehan challenges the industry's overreliance on traditional risk scoring, arguing that ticking ESG boxes won't protect banks when suppliers go offline due to heatwaves, droughts, or geopolitical fallout. His firsthand crisis management experience during events like Log4j paints a clear picture—trust isn't built on policy, it's earned in real-time chaos.

He also raises the red flag on governance blind spots. While geopolitical risk is often discussed, its low predictability makes it easy to ignore—until it’s too late. Linehan warns that climate instability will bleed into political upheaval, and those downstream shocks could devastate even the most tech-driven organizations. For institutions dependent on resilient service delivery, it’s not a question of if, but when your third party becomes your biggest vulnerability.