At Incitare International, we no longer speak about finance as an abstract system. We speak about finance as a survival tool.
This conviction was powerfully reaffirmed at a January 2026 seminar at the Graduate Institute, Geneva (IHEID), held on the eve of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meetings in Davos. The event brought together an inter-generational community of practitioners, investors, academics and systems thinkers to confront a shared reality: public budgets are shrinking, climate risks are accelerating, and trust in existing institutions is wearing thin.
The question is no longer whether finance must change; but, whether we are brave enough to change it in time.
The seminar, Rethinking Resource Mobilisation to Achieve the Global “Survival” Goals, was hosted by Professor Nathan Sussman and introduced by Christian Kingombe, Founder and Managing Partner of 4IP Group. Christian reflected on the mission of the Global Rethinking Finance Collaborative (GRFC) and the specific gap it seeks to address: building stronger and more intentional bridges between International Geneva and the Geneva Financial Hub, complementing — rather than duplicating — existing platforms such as Building Bridges.
Keynote speaker Beris Gwynne, Founder of Incitare International and Co-Founder of the GRFC, shared reflections from more than a decade of work in Geneva and from the Futures Fairs for Business & Finance in 2024 and 2025. These experiences have consistently demonstrated a simple truth: the ideas, projects, and leadership already exist. What is missing is alignment, courage, and the structures that allow good ideas to scale.
This conversation is unfolding at a moment of historic global transition. In 2024, United Nations Member States adopted the Pact for the Future, committing to pursue development that balances economic, social and environmental priorities. Soon after, the UN established the High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP to redefine how nations measure progress.
Its interim findings are clear: GDP fails to capture what matters most to people’s lives. Health, environmental integrity, social cohesion, inequality, cultural capital and ecosystem resilience must now stand alongside economic output in national decision-making. A universal well-being dashboard is being developed to guide countries toward long-term prosperity and the Sustainable Development Goals.
This global shift mirrors precisely the philosophy that Incitare has advanced for years: growth without well-being is failure, and finance without ethics is instability.
Geneva is one of the world’s most important centres for global governance, finance and sustainability dialogue. Yet its greatest strength has also been its weakness. Conversations too often remain episodic, disconnected and siloed.
Building Bridges 2022 revealed Geneva’s extraordinary convening power and its structural gap. Entrepreneurs, SMEs and systems-change initiatives struggled to maintain visibility, continuity and access to finance once the event lights dimmed. Finance was being discussed but not yet redesigned.
In response, Incitare and partners, together with the Club of Rome community, proposed a shift from an annual event culture to a year-round, action-oriented ecosystem grounded in systems thinking, investor readiness and inter-sessional continuity.
From this vision emerged the Global Rethinking Finance Collaborative (GRFC).
The GRFC exists to:
The GRFC is not a finished institution. It is a living collaborative experiment.
Its governance, resourcing and scalability remain open challenges, not weaknesses to be hidden, but realities to be navigated with honesty. Systems transformation is never linear, comfortable or complete.
What the GRFC insists upon is direction: finance must serve survival, dignity and future generations, not merely quarterly growth.
Incitare International continues to accompany this journey with humility and determination. We do not claim to hold the answers. We claim only the responsibility to keep asking better questions, building bridges, and supporting the emergence of financial systems capable of sustaining life on this planet.
The question is no longer whether the world must move beyond GDP. The question is whether we will design the financial systems courageous enough to make that transition possible.
And whether we are ready to accept that, in the end, the real returns are not numbers on a balance sheet — but the survival, dignity and future of humanity itself.
