The world in 2040

During the 2025 UBS European Conference, we hosted “World in 2040"panels, bringing together thought leaders and experts from across academia, the public sector, and the financial industry as we look towards the next 15 years.

Analysing the impact of extreme weather on insurance companies, the panel noted evidence that innovation is emerging for the benefit of the customer, including the introduction of catastrophe bonds, and concluded that despite an increase in catastrophic events, the industry has sufficient access to capital to support this. In our panel on the journey to truly personalised nutrition, the speakers identified growth opportunities in a range of markets including wearables, ready-to-eat products, healthy substitution solutions, and plant-based dairy.

In a panel on the increasing popularity of private assets among investors, the speakers expected returns from private markets to converge with public market returns, mainly fuelled by higher liquidity, and see potential for significant further AUM growth through fresh allocations to a new investor pool. Digital currencies and Stablecoins have similarly seen increasing attention, with institutional flows driving significant volumes and liquidity, and favourable regulation showcasing institutional confidence, offering the potential for faster, cheaper, and more transparent payments in the future.

Our panel on the constraints faced by current healthcare infrastructure (inability to meet growing demand and limited supply) emphasised the need to put the main user at the forefront of any institutional change, but also some recent successes in the sector like the rise of telehealth, and the potential for AI use in bureaucracy management. Tackling rapid changes in the world of work from the rise of AI, the speakers acknowledged the potential for headcount reduction and loss of linear careers, but also argued that the automation of routine tasks could provide more time for high-value roles.

While AI use in the real estate market remains low, and construction productivity has decreased in recent years despite technological progress, a futurist identified a number of transformational opportunities for the real estate sector, ranging from drone-accessible locations and robot-ready spaces to futurist projects like martian habitats and geothermal-powered cryptopias. The power of innovation was also at the centre of our panel on humanoid robots, as the speakers discussed diverse use cases such as household chores, medicine and physiotherapy, automated interactions in front desk areas, and quality control in industrial processes.