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And that can put the finance team in the hot seat, or command center, depending on the business.

Yet the response from large enterprises to today’s ongoing macro uncertainty and supply-chain challenges, according to new research from PYMNTS Intelligence’s June 2025 CAIO Report, “The Enterprise Reset: Tariffs, Uncertainty and the Limits of Operational Response,” is not one of sweeping transformation but of strategic hesitation.

The report found that a minority of companies, fewer than 6%, are taking bold steps like reshoring manufacturing or redesigning products in light of tariff and trade turbulence. Instead, most are opting for temporary cost-cutting, incremental pricing changes and cautious contract renegotiations.

The backdrop to this cautious recalibration is a volatile trade environment. From semiconductor restrictions to energy tariffs, the global business landscape is being reshaped not by market forces but by regulatory chess matches.

Enterprises now confront a set of “known unknowns”: rising tariff threats, supply bottlenecks and sudden price spikes. It’s at this nexus where operational discipline, financial data and focused resilience are shaping a smarter, more deliberate transformation.

Tariffs, Tension and Tactical Thinking

The PYMNTS Intelligence report data found that nearly all firms (96%) say tariffs have negatively impacted their operations, and 84% cite persistent shortages as an ongoing challenge. Yet, fewer than 1 in 4 (23%) plan to make long-term operational changes in the next year.

At first glance, it may seem irrational for companies to not reconfigure their supply chains or rethink their cost structures in the face of prolonged uncertainty. But the truth is more nuanced. Moving a major supplier or changing a production site, for example, isn’t like flipping a switch. It involves compliance reviews, customer approvals and major capital expenditure.

At the same time, any executives are betting that tariffs are temporary. There’s a belief — hope, even — that cooler heads will prevail and mitigate aggressive trade stances. Additionally, despite years of digitization talk, many companies may still lack the real-time visibility needed to confidently make cross-border structural decisions.

So, what are companies doing? A majority of firms (60%) surveyed report they are addressing these challenges through tighter partner coordination, smarter sourcing contract terms, more dynamic price modeling and greater alignment between finance and procurement functions.

Read the report: The Enterprise Reset: Tariffs, Uncertainty and the Limits of Operational Response

The Emerging Strategic Model of Discipline as Growth Center

In this vein, firms are leveraging internal data, including procurement and payment analytics, to monitor supplier performance and maintain operational continuity without upending established workflows. Many firms are prioritizing improvements to existing systems to avoid unnecessary complexity.

More than half of surveyed enterprises are renegotiating supplier and logistics terms to gain pricing leverage and reduce exposure. The report found that technology investment is rising, particularly in systems that offer better visibility into cash flow, vendor risk and procurement performance.

These adjustments reflect a deeper integration between finance, operations and procurement functions — something many organizations accelerated during the pandemic and are now institutionalizing.

The findings from report suggest a broader shift underway: the emergence of a strategic model that prioritizes real-time insight, cross-functional alignment and controlled responsiveness. Rather than pursuing large, immediate transformation, organizations are building resilience through readiness — preparing the groundwork for change, but executing with discipline.

Ultimately, today’s tactical posture is not a sign of delay, but preparation. Many enterprises are using this period of uncertainty to sharpen their internal capabilities and modernize systems, so they are better positioned for more transformative moves in the future.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Keeping Score: Why Data Quality Determines Lending Decisions for the Smallest Firms” revealed a challenge for financial institutions. Banks, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, are keen to finance small businesses but frequently lack the verified data needed to confidently assess a company’s risk.

The study, based on a survey conducted from March 4 to April 2, gathered insights from 350 banking executives in the U.S. and U.K., encompassing leaders from credit unions, community banks, regional banks, large national banks and digital-only institutions. These executives, involved in commercial lending, credit underwriting, customer acquisition or compliance, offered direct visibility into their firms’ data practices for small business loan applications.

The report highlighted that incomplete, outdated or missing records impeded approvals, raised rejection rates and narrowed credit access for the smallest firms. This led financial institutions to either apply higher risk pricing or reject applicants outright, even if the business was fundamentally creditworthy.

A core problem was that micro-sized firms were often “too small for manual review and too opaque for automated scoring,” rendering them unscored and underserved, the report found.

While robust credit assessment provided a competitive edge, leading to more approvals and increased profitability for lenders, pervasive data gaps fostered conservative lending patterns. Despite interest from 60% of U.S. banks and 64% of U.K. banks in real-time data access for small- to medium-sized business (SMB) lending, only 3 in 10 financial institutions in both countries possessed comprehensive credit assessment tools for micro-businesses, largely due to inaccurate, incomplete and outdated data.

Key findings from the report include:

• Nearly 3 in 10 micro-business loan applications were rejected because data on the business’s identity or legitimacy could not be verified, a rejection rate five times higher than that for larger enterprise applications. This suggests that the smallest firms were often penalized for data deficits rather than their actual risk profile.
• The perceived profitability of SMB lending was directly correlated with the quality and comprehensiveness of a bank’s credit assessment. Among banks with very or extremely comprehensive SMB underwriting, 84% reported this segment as highly profitable, a contrast to 39% of less-equipped banks. The profitability gap was wider for micro-businesses, with only 22% of large banks, a quarter of credit unions, and fewer than 3 in 10 digital-only banks stating that lending to these firms was profitable.
• Financial institutions prioritized real-time access to third-party data over API integration solutions for faster decision making. Six in 10 U.S. banks expressed high interest in providers offering live access to micro- and small-business data, a figure that climbed to 70% among large banks and existing third-party data users. This emphasis on immediate utility over system design aimed to accelerate underwriting and approvals.

The report further detailed that data quality failures, including inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent and outdated information, were the primary obstacles in underwriting small businesses. Financial institutions exhibited higher confidence in data verified by independent third parties, such as credit bureau data on debt repayment history (96% confidence) or audited financial statements (94% confidence), compared to self-reported information from businesses.

Paradoxically, the study found an inverse relationship between the proportion of micro-SMB clients in a bank’s portfolio and its use of third-party data. Half of institutions with 60% or more micro-SMB customers used external data, versus 83% of banks with lower micro-SMB exposure. This suggests a “scale problem,” where banks heavily focused on SMBs may face budget constraints for external validation, potentially operating with less visibility into their borrowers.

Ultimately, the report concluded that addressing data reliability, prioritizing real-time access, linking profitability to assessment quality, and scaling data strategy with SMB penetration were critical for banks aiming to effectively serve and profit from this essential business segment.

Speaking at TheCityUK’s annual conference in London, Lee addressed global rules that will be implemented next year that place a 1,250% risk weight charge on crypto assets banks hold on their balance sheet, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

“That’s prohibitive in terms of regulated firm,” Lee said, according to the report. “So, as we think about how fast this market is moving, is that something that actually, as an industry we want in the non-regulated sphere, or is it better that it’s supervised appropriately, with the right oversight?”

Lee’s comments came as regulators and banks around the world wrestle with finding a balance between mitigating the risks around cryptocurrencies and embracing the opportunities they present.

It was reported Wednesday (June 25) that the European Commission is set to announce rules governing the stablecoin market despite warnings from the European Central Bank that the regulations could threaten the region’s banks when markets grow more volatile.

The commission’s formal guidance will propose that stablecoins issued outside the European Union are treated as interchangeable with same-branded versions allowed only on EU markets.

On Tuesday (June 24), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said stablecoins “fall short” as a form of sound money and “without regulation pose a risk to financial stability and monetary sovereignty.”

Because stablecoins do not deliver acceptance for payment at par, timely discharge of obligations or safeguards against financial crime, “their future role is unclear,” the BIS said.

In the U.S., the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve said in April that they withdrew earlier warnings that cast a chill over banks’ involvement with cryptocurrencies.

The banking regulators said that by making these changes, they aimed to signal a new regulatory openness to banks engaging in digital asset activities, provided they do so prudently and within the bounds of existing law.

It was reported Wednesday that on Capitol Hill, momentum is accelerating behind legislative efforts to bring stablecoins under federal oversight and to create a framework for the development of legislation for digital assets.

The potential changes comes as the country’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), announced Tuesday (June 24) said it is weighing a proposal that would give Google “strategic market status,” a designation under new competition rules for tech companies that hold higher levels of power in their markets.

“Google is the world’s leading search tool and plays an important role in all our lives, with the average person in the UK making 5 to 10 searches a day,” Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said in a news release.

“It is equally critical for over 200,000 UK businesses which rely on Google to reach their customers. Google search has delivered tremendous benefits — but our investigation so far suggests there are ways to make these markets more open, competitive and innovative,” Cardell added.

The CMA said its investigation has found concerns about Google, including a complaint that its index of billions of websites, its access to trillions of historical searches, and its information ecosystem of information, are difficult for others to replicate.

The regulator also heard concerns about higher costs of search advertising than would be found in a more competitive market, as well as “limited transparency and fairness in how Google ranks and presents search results.”

Earlier this year, the CMA was given added competition and merger control powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, which lets the watchdog enforce consumer protections on tech giants and take action like levying fines of up to 10% of global annual revenues for violations.

According to the CMA announcement, the regulator has proposed a list of measures for Google if the strategic market status designation goes forward. These include new controls over how publishers’ content is used, including for artificial intelligence (AI)-generated responses, as well as “portability of consumer search data to support product innovation.”

A report on the CMA’s decision by CNBC includes a response from Google, which said the outcome of these changes “could have significant implications for businesses and consumers” in Great Britain.

“The CMA has today reiterated that ‘strategic market status’ does not imply that anti-competitive behaviour has taken place — yet this announcement presents clear challenges to critical areas of our business in the UK,” said Oliver Bethell, Google’s senior director for competition. “We’re concerned that the scope of the CMA’s considerations remains broad and unfocused, with a range of interventions being considered before any evidence has been provided.”