Like every financial pontificator and prognosticator, I am going to present predictions for 2023. I could go tearing through the entrail or birds or try reading tarot cards, but experience teaches the best we can do is guess, and then carefully dress it up and hedge these guesses to present them as informed advice. But that’s not what readers are looking for. Readers generally want insights and ideas so here is my best advice for dealing with 2023.

First, forget everything you ever thought you knew about economics and your perceptions of current markets! That might just be the best piece of advice I ever give. Chuck everything you think is sacrosanct in the bin and start again. Do so, and the current contradictory markets and theoretical economic morass might make a little more sense. Break it down and reconstruct the bits and pieces to make sense of your perceptions! Remembering, of course, to spice it with plenty of self-doubt.

Remember the most significant danger to markets is people. The market, after all, is just an enormous voting machine weighing up the votes of every participant. Things get complicated when everyone is pessimistically careful causing the prices to become overly depressed. Hence smart money says to be fearless when others are fearful. Things get dangerous when market participants are optimistically careless causing prices to soar to euphoric levels. Know the mood and trade accordingly.

We still seem trapped in a phase of over-optimism with investors jumping on any positive news to validate their hopes the market will go higher. After all, that’s what they have been doing since 2009, so surely, they can only ever go up. Nope. A lower-than-expected US Consumer Price Index pushes up prices for a while. Any hints of a Fed “pivot” to lower rate rises will push stock markets higher.

If you want an example of over-optimism in the face of reality, it’s the high likelihood that the market believes that Central Banks can navigate a genuine soft landing. Why? They have never previously succeeded. Every known instance of economies overheating, and rampant inflation has been followed by a crash of some description as Central Banks either let inflation run on too long or engineer an economic crisis by hiking rates too hard. There is no such thing as a soft landing, but a good landing is one you can walk away from.

First, forget everything you ever thought you knew about economics and your perceptions of current markets!

The expectation that we can still avoid a damaging recession in 2023 is strong across markets. I don’t want to sound grumpy, but I still think a recession will happen because of rising rates, property sentiment dipping, and inflation which leaves consumers unhappy, nervous and not buying. For consumer societies to thrive, we need more, not less consumption. People spend even less when faced with tax rises, austerity spending, declining services, rabid inflation, industrial strife, and ongoing political sleaze. It’s a recipe for economic misery, and next year's stagflation, in the UK, looks nailed on.

To see where we are going, look back to where we have come from. 2022 was a watershed year. The third exogenous shock of the decade, the Ukraine War and Energy Price Shock, followed by COVID-19 in 2020 and Supply Chain Disruptions in 2021. We also have a critical endogenous shock underway. Quantitative Tightening as global Central Banks try to unroll the effects of monetary experimentation in the 2010s.

You also must understand the key economic factors that drove markets and inflation through the 2010s. The first was monetary experimentation keeping interest rates low to drive economic recovery following the global financial crash of 2008. But we didn’t get an economic boom. What we got was galloping financial asset inflation as bond prices and stock prices went stratospheric. That distortion enflamed market exuberance and euphoria, triggering the stock market bubbles in Big Tech, disruptive tech and the stupidities of meme stocks, crypto and NFTs.

At the same time, we had the second factor, a de-facto cap on global inflation: China. The Middle Kingdom became the “cheapest to deliver” manufacturer exporting deflation around the globe, and all supply chains led back to it. COVID and the building of a geopolitical stag fight between China and the USA profoundly changed that reality. It unleashed supply chain price instability as geopolitics changed and shut off the deflation spigot.

The era of cheap money fuelling markets and downward pressure on prices is over. Make sure you understand that there is a new reality of real inflation and expensive money before figuring out what 2023 looks like. Although the indications are for inflation to moderate, I reckon it will prove stubbornly high and challenging to de-fumigate from Western economies.

Let’s scribble down some possible scenarios and predictions for 2023. My starting point would be to worry about further shocks. What about another exogenous shock?  Could COVID in China overwhelming the medical system create a judder moment triggering another China shutdown, making the Government look weak, causing the possibility of a deeper global recession, and the possibility of President Xi deciding to deflect by going outward bound on Taiwan?

Could the Bird Flu that’s ravaged Christmas Turkey’s jump species lead to a second major pandemic? What are the chances Central Banks decide to go soft again and turn market accommodating? Slashing rates to avoid a market meltdown and a deep recession?

These are all known unknowns, and none are binary. There are numerous others we could discuss, including political instability across the west, the dollar, and the great retirement causing a demographic crisis in the jobs market, and thus the economics of every firm that hires staff!

Equally, there are a host of entirely unpredictable events that could occur. Dreaming up storyboards for disaster movies is fun but scary: the big West Coast earthquake, a super-volcano triggering a mini-ice-age, a meteor strike, a solar flare, an unwater landslide caused by ocean warming causing a tsunami to hit Europe’s Atlantic and North Sea Coasts, a storm surge in the North Sea flooding London and the Netherlands. There is any number of unimaginable events.

Or it may be something financial. A big bank discovers its bust on the back of a housing crisis, a major hedge fund evaporating in a slew of downright stupid trades, or a pension fund exploding in a leverage/liquidity event. Don’t discount anything upsetting our cosy little apple cart of expectations. I think it is 100% likely the remaining cryptocurrency exchanges will collapse in a welter of liquidity events but if you were invested, there is no one to blame but yourself.

What about bond markets? The consensus is bonds are likely to rally on the back of the pace of interest rate rises declining. That doesn’t factor in residual inflation remaining higher than expected, the effects of the sheer over-indebtedness of nations like Italy, France, and even the USA, or the fact that Central Banks are trying to sell down their QE inventory creating a supply glut. The much-heralded bond rally may yet be premature.

Or earnings? Stock markets are still rolling on hopes rather than the fundamentals of good versus bad companies and their earnings. The quality of earnings and their sustainability to competitive threats and a changing economy matter. There is still a shakeout on valuations and stock market multiples to come.

In currencies, sterling has recovered all its losses since the Liz Truss mini-budget disaster but mainly on the back of adults being back in the Downing Street room, and dollar weakness. What does the coming year hold for US growth on the back of a weaker dollar and with all the effects that would have on the global economy?

I predict the big themes for 2023 will be renewables, carbon mitigation, agri-business, soil enhancement, commodity weakness, healthcare in terms of AI, obesity and Cancer drugs, consumers and retail. I plan to continue exploring these topics in 2023.

The cost of doing business is already rising – and we expect this to continue into 2023 as businesses enter a period of consolidation and cost-cutting to combat rising inflation and expenses. In tandem, the customer base will shrink as spending is scaled back.

Planning for this uncertainty is not easy. But as we step into the next year, agility will be key. Those that are able to react and adapt to new challenges and create a sustainable economic model for growth will be best equipped to survive. Crucially, taking advantage of the fintech and payments industry to maximise efficiency, cut costs and navigate changing regulations will be highly beneficial in creating a competitive edge.

Here are my predictions on how businesses will benefit from payment innovation and expertise in 2023 to combat economic uncertainty:

1. Cost-cutting efforts will push business towards payment solutions that facilitate speed of delivery and overall efficiency.

Inflation is the silent killer of businesses and personal wealth. That is why heading into 2023, in this period of economic volatility, businesses will be forced to take a step back and consider how they combat fluctuating costs while streamlining operations and responding to customer demand for reliability and speed of delivery.

We’ve already seen the Bank of England’s efforts to support businesses by raising interest rates, but next year, businesses will look towards the payments industry for more help. So much so, that businesses will increasingly adopt modern payment tools to build speed and efficiency into cross-border products and services – helping to manage liquidity with instant settlement, keep customers happy, unlock new revenue streams and offset inflationary pressures. By increasing the speed of cross-border products and services, businesses can ensure they reliably pay and get paid in real-time, every time.

Fundamentally, those who can modernise their processes successfully will be better equipped to survive this uncertain time with stable and reliable finances.

2. Payment provider innovation will allow businesses to accelerate their global ambitions.

Many, if not all, businesses aspire to operate globally – taking advantage of talent, market appetite, and regulatory opportunities around the world. However, international expansion is often part of the long-term roadmap – a goal that follows funding, momentum objectives, or customer acquisition.

But today’s economic challenges will see businesses accelerate these global ambitions in the relentless pursuit of growth. Opportunities to expand their customer base and drive new revenue streams become harder to ignore when combatting inflationary challenges and squeezed budgets.

As businesses adopt this global mindset, they will increasingly lean on payment providers as a reliable and flexible financial bridge into these new markets. With this support, businesses of all sizes will feel equal to larger enterprises, both in terms of resources and market opportunities. Unlike ever before, they will be able to leverage the same payment infrastructure to receive and send money in local currencies, at low exchange rates and in real-time. In turn, this will build trust with new markets and mitigate the effects of economic uncertainty.  

3. As regulatory challenges persist, businesses will look for partners to remove the headache. 

In 2023, businesses will become increasingly attuned to the complexity of changing global regulations. It’s here that payment providers will play a key role in removing compliance as a hurdle to international growth, customer acquisition or revenue generation.

Fundamentally, leaders want to spend their time focused on business growth, product development and customer experience. And so, managing different regulatory environments can quickly become burdensome and costly. Many do not factor into their roadmap that each market may require a new license to move money or different compliance standards for onboarding customers and verifying identities.

As being compliant and adhering to regulations is of utmost importance, it can ultimately draw attention away from more strategic endeavours that lead to growth. This means that as budgets are squeezed in 2023, businesses will want to ensure time and resources are spent on what will help, not hinder, the bottom line. The right payments partner will remove this headache, managing global regulatory compliance needs and requirements in real-time, so crucial resources and budgets are available to be allocated to growth.

Final words

Navigating uncertainty next year will require a considered approach. Businesses will need to consolidate both to drive efficiency gains but also to hone in on the most productive parts of the business. For many, payments industry innovation and technology will be key differentiator in mitigating economic uncertainty. The need to streamline the business, facilitate speed and reliability in payments and remain regulatory compliant under new frameworks will all push businesses toward payment providers. It’ll be these partnerships that will help businesses unlock growth opportunities and offset 2023’s cost pressures.

Speaking to the BBC, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said he does not expect the cost of living crisis to ease until next year.

“It is going to be a difficult period ahead, I readily admit, because we are already seeing, and we're going to see, a reduction in real income,” Bailey told the BBC. 

“We're going to start coming out of it in 2023, and two years from now, we expect inflation back to a more stable position. 

“Inflation, the rate at which prices are rising, is expected to peak at 7.25% in April, more than three times its target of 2%, and average close to 6% in 2022. 

“This is a world of external prices rising, reducing people's real incomes,” Bailey added.

Bailey also suggested that workers should not ask for big pay rises to cope with the rising cost of living. However, this comment has come up against a wave of criticism, with the TUC calling Bailey's advice on pay restraint “ill-founded.”