Susannah Streeter is a global financial commentator and former BBC business anchor who is sought after as a thought leader on trends affecting the world economy.
She provides award-winning analysis to the world’s media as part of her role as Head of Money and Markets for the UK’s largest retail investment platform, Hargreaves Lansdown.
As a bilingual BBC anchor, with a career spanning two decades in broadcasting, she presented flagship global business shows on TV and radio, and now speaks and chairs debates at major conferences around the world, focusing on macro-economics, energy, sustainability, defence and artificial intelligence.
She frequently interviews prime ministers, CEOs, central bankers and military leaders at high-level events which have included The World Green Economy Summit in Dubai, Arctic Frontiers in Tromso, the Global Air and Space Chiefs Conference in London, the Global Fund Conference in Lyon, the Our Ocean summit in Oslo, the Sustainable Finance Forum in Abu Dhabi and the EU Nuclear Forum in Prague.
She also speaks on resilience, team building and leadership in a fractured world, drawing on her experience as an RAF Reserve officer. As a Squadron Leader she led the force’s mobile news team for almost a decade on exercises and operations around the world.
Susannah is in demand as a guest commentator on crypto currencies and the challenges digital coins and tokens pose to the financial system. She also covers seismic changes affecting the retail landscape in the wake of the pandemic, digital shopping trends and sustainability targets.
Susannah is also a popular podcaster. She hosts the HL Switch Your Money On investment podcast, presents the Tech Directions podcast with Microsoft and EY, anchored the How to Grow a CMO series, co-hosted the BackSpace and Beyond tech podcast, featured on BBC Radio 2, and was a presenter for the World Business Report podcast on the BBC World Service.
Money is the soundtrack to our lives. From squeezing a fistful of sweaty pennies as we navigated pick and mix treats, to the pounds earned during a Saturday job, to your first pay check and last pension contribution. Given that it’s an ever-present force pulsing through every part of our interaction with the world – you’d think that by now we’d have got the hang of it. Instead, money is a worry. It can keep us up at night. It can extinguish our hopes. It can lead to depression. Women effectively work for free for nearly two months of the year compared to the average man. Women are also losing out when it comes to investments, as they are far less likely to invest, which puts them at a financial disadvantage in the long term. Men have billions more in stocks and shares ISAs, investment accounts and pensions. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Susannah, as a senior investment and markets analyst and a campaigner for equal pay at the BBC unlocks the mysteries of the financial system. She helps build the knowledge manual to help women negotiate getting a better deal at home, work and in the world of investments.
Following 18 months of shocks, from the invasion of Ukraine to commodity price spirals, bond market mayhem and a banking crisis, investors are set to remain highly sensitive to further upheaval particularly given that a third of the world is forecast to enter recession this year. Inflation is showing signs of easing and consumers are proving more resilient that expected but investors are much more highly attuned to the potential for threats to escalate.
Susannah Streeter constantly takes a temperature check on the world economy in her role as head of money and markets for Hargreaves Lansdown, also drawing on her many years of experience as a global business anchor for the BBC. She explains the task ahead for central bank officials, still trying to rein in inflation:
Policymakers are valiantly trying their hand at being master chefs by trying to stop inflation burning spending power whilst avoiding the economies sinking like undercooked souffles. The recipes are showing some signs of working with price spirals finally edging down from painful peaks and there are hopes recessions will be shallower.
US stocks have re-entered bull market territory thanks to the extraordinary enthusiasm for tech giants with footholds in the AI revolution, but while the FTSE 100 breached a record high earlier this year, its retreated as clouds gather over the global economy and UK companies still weighed down by the repercussions of Brexit.
We are facing an increasingly fractured economic and political world, so finding new forums of communication and collaboration to find our way through the fog of war and corporate dislocation and are increasingly vital.
Susannah has a unique view of the power of communication and how it can help change the world for the better. This spans from her early days in uniform as the founding member of the royal Air Force mobile news team when she used the power of film to enact change, to her senior anchor position for the BBC, up until now as a sought-after analyst and chair of politically sensitive global debates
True inclusivity involves bringing polarised views together. We need to learn from ostracised but powerful individuals, rather than shutting down unwelcome voices, and create new cross feed lines of dialogue alongside traditional institutions.
Social media and the crypto world have collided with Kim Kardashian’s single post about a token considered to be the biggest financial promotion in history.
As head of money and markets Susannah has witnessed the FOMO effect wave which gathered speed since the pandemic, and has swept vulnerable consumers up in a frenzy of speculation.
The boom of high-risk investing has caused huge nervousness among regulators, with the Financial Conduct Authority increasingly concerned. Now, with the cost-of-living squeeze intensifying, Susannah argues the focus should instead be on ensuring consumers have a resilient pile of savings and lower risk investments to fall back on. While the charge of new younger customers into the stock markets is a welcome trend, there is woeful knowledge about the financial dangers of investing in high-risk products, which include investment-based crowdfunding. It’s clear that education needs to be sharpened up pretty pronto. But there are also risks of going in too hard on the regulatory front.
There has been a hesitancy until now about bringing crypto currencies into the regulatory sphere because of the risk it will add more legitimacy to the currencies. Regulators and central banks are walking a tricky tightrope, recognizing the need to foster new decentralized payments technology while ensuring enough rules are in place to prevent runaway speculation infecting the wider financial sector. If the environment is made too cumbersome there is a risk that innovation in the fast-moving world of decentralized finance could be quashed, slowing down the efficiency of operations and leaving the UK behind countries which are welcoming crypto with open arms.
Money is the soundtrack to our lives. From squeezing a fistful of sweaty pennies as we navigated pick and mix treats, to the pounds earned during a Saturday job, to your first pay check and last pension contribution. Given that it’s an ever-present force pulsing through every part of our interaction with the world – you’d think that by now we’d have got the hang of it. Instead, money is a worry. It can keep us up at night. It can extinguish our hopes. It can lead to depression. Women effectively work for free for nearly two months of the year compared to the average man. Women are also losing out when it comes to investments, as they are far less likely to invest, which puts them at a financial disadvantage in the long term. Men have billions more in stocks and shares ISAs, investment accounts and pensions. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Susannah, as a senior investment and markets analyst and a campaigner for equal pay at the BBC unlocks the mysteries of the financial system. She helps build the knowledge manual to help women negotiate getting a better deal at home, work and in the world of investments.
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