Building Asia capability as a resilience strategy: what boards need to ask

Geopolitical risk is now structural - reshaping energy, supply chains, market access and government intervention across the region

• Did we see this coming - and what does that tell us about our intelligence and scenario planning?
• Are we treating security and growth as trade-offs, or as the same investment?
• What happens if a key market, currency channel or supply route becomes unavailable overnight?
• Has the board received structured geopolitical scenario analysis - or has it been managing in real time?

• Embed geopolitical scenario planning as a standing board agenda item and not as a response to events
• Stress-test capital allocation, liquidity and financing assumptions under prolonged disruption scenarios
• Invest in strategic capabilities - local processing, alternative supply, inventory buffers - as long-term priorities, not crisis responses
• Engage with government early where the business intersects with national interest or strategic sectors. Once fully embedded, policy settings are far harder to shape after the fact than before, (as the East Coast Gas Reservation Policy illustrated) . The window for influencing how a policy applies to your business is narrow and closes quickly.

Asia capability is operational, not aspirational – the gap between presence and genuine capability proved measurable under disruption

• Is our Asia capability operational or present only on paper?
• Do we have counterparty relationships that could carry a difficult commercial conversation under pressure?
• Does our team have genuine in-market regulatory literacy or do they wait for head office guidance?
• Have we mapped our supply chain exposure to physical and financial chokepoints or is it assumed?

• Test Asia capability against three operational markers: (i) trusted counterparty relationships; (ii) in-market regulatory literacy; (iii) supply chain exposure already mapped 
• Capture what happened. Document what the organisation actually did during the disruption - which relationships were activated, which suppliers switched, which decisions made locally.  
• Build in-market capability and relationships as a sustained investment. They cannot be assembled under pressure. 
• Build supply chain diversification as a permanent feature of operational planning, not a post-crisis adjustment.

Regulatory expectations now travel downstream – APRA’s geopolitical readiness requirements will flow to the businesses banks, insurers and super funds deal with

• How are our lenders, insurers and super funds now assessing our geopolitical risk profile? 
• Are the assumptions they are making about our supply chain concentration, sanctions exposure and regional dependencies still accurate? 
• When did we last update the picture they hold of our business?

• Understand how your lenders, insurers and super funds are being assessed by APRA. Minimum readiness expectations now apply across six areas including sanctions exposure and market-closure scenarios. 
• Assess whether the picture those institutions hold of your business is accurate, and address gaps proactively. 
• Treat geopolitical readiness as a due diligence category - it is moving from governance aspiration to lender expectation. 
• Increase the pace and transparency of disclosure and governance to reflect the speed at which the external environment now moves.

Resilience gaps have been exposed – contracts, governance cadence and capital allocation models were stress-tested, and gaps remain

• Did our contracts perform as expected under stress, and did we know how to use them? 
• Where are the weakest points in our resilience framework - contracts, governance cadence or capital models? 
• Is our board reporting cycle calibrated for high-velocity events, or does it rely on management to escalate?

• Review force majeure, Material Adverse Clause (MAC) and cost pass-through clauses against what actually happened - not against January assumptions. Close the gap between drafting and execution capability. 
• Assess whether escalation protocols and pre-agreed decision authorities exist for defined disruption scenarios. 
• Reprice and redesign capital allocation models based on real disruption scenarios. 
• Review governance cadence - the gap between how fast conditions moved and how frequently boards were meeting is a design question, not a management one.