Worried about your company's balance sheet? Cute. Try carrying the eurozone's debt burden on your back. 

That's what Kalin Anev Janse has done with his work in designing and running the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). They assist countries in financial distress through loans, raised through bond issuance, in return for economic reforms.

Janse is now CFO of the ESM—the largest international financial institution by capitalization—where he’s responsible for innovation in areas such as AI and automation. He’s also chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF) CFO Community, giving him direct insights from the people running the biggest balance sheets on the planet. The group enables finance chiefs—from organizations such as Volkswagen, Shell, and Petronas—to share ideas on tech innovation, sustainable finance, and economic strategies.

The most pressing change to the CFO agenda is the tidal wave of uncertainty washing over the world, Janse told us. Throw in AI transforming finance lead roles, and increasing promotions to CEO, and the stakes are getting higher.

Janse: One of a CFO’s most important jobs is to get investors in. To tell the company’s or, in my case, institution’s story, its purpose and success, by building long-term personal relationships.

I manage both sides of the balance sheet as we are an investor ourselves with €100 billion under management. Through our bond issuance, ESM attracts capital from around 2000 investors around the globe.

Travel gives you a far better understanding of what drives investor, politician and central bank decisions. For example, how countries responded to the Middle East conflict.

And it means you have friends. When you have a difficult bond deal, it’s important to be able to phone your biggest investors: “I need your help on this one, please participate.”

Janse: I came here, seconded from McKinsey to the European Investment Bank (EIB), in the depths of the great financial crisis (GFC) and eurozone crisis, to help coordinate its response. I created the first budget and organizational chart for the European Financial Stability Facility, the precursor of the ESM.

After a year, I said to our managing director, “I’m going back to my job in Amsterdam.” He said, “I want you to [stay and become] secretary general and management board member.” Then I became CFO in 2019 and I’m still here.

The GFC, it’s a moment you’ll never forget. A once every 80 to 100 year event. But history will show what it meant for Europe. The tiny role we played is still a significant part of my life. It felt like we were taking care of this European project.

The ESM gave the countries that needed help low-rate, sustainable loans, so they could reform and restructure areas such as tax revenue and government spending. Today, they’re among the best performing economies in the world, rated by The Economist.

Janse: It’s completely different now. It doesn’t mean we won’t face another crisis. But we have strengthened the architecture by creating the ESM and multiple supervisory mechanisms for banks, markets, and insurance and pension schemes.

So we can withstand external shocks better now. For example, when Silicon Valley Bank (US) and Credit Suisse (Switzerland) fell over in 2023, both were outside the eurozone. We didn’t feel any spillover. Also, when markets rejected former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’ fiscal plans, the eurozone was shielded from that.

Janse: Bringing together finance heads from the world’s biggest companies creates a valuable exchange about how the future will look.

In our latest session, we identified three topics:

Janse: We designed our funding strategy to stay flexible and diversified. We maintain strong market access and multiple funding sources. Continuous monitoring of market conditions [enables us] to adapt issuance timing and mitigate concentration risks.

We also need to be able to meet all obligations even under stress, including unexpected outflows such as collateral calls or sudden disbursements. To ensure this, we keep buffers of cash and highly liquid assets.

Then to anticipate funding needs, we combine detailed and continuous cashflow projections with early indicators and stress signals. And we stress test cashflows in daily risk management and planning, to assess resilience and ensure contingencies.

Janse: Early tests of how AI solutions could support our funding work showed the potential and limits of off-the-shelf tools. This led us to team up with the University of Luxembourg and recruit three PhDs to explore this area. The ESM has many staff with academic experience, which enhances our ability to translate research outcomes into operational value.

We created an internal AI agent called Frankie, after a staff member’s dog. In bond issuance, we’ve used Frankie to help us analyze bank proposal requests.

I also see AI starting to dominate investment, and it’s now embedded in much of our coding work. One portfolio manager in my investment team is leading an exercise to analyze holdings and market pricing to evaluate investment opportunities. If he wrote the code himself, it would take days. With Claude Code, it takes a few minutes for a working prototype.

Janse: As the use of data, automation and AI grows, deterministic finance is a shift toward model-driven decision making.

For a public issuer like the ESM, this shift enables faster insights and more responsive decisions as market signals evolve. We’re investing significant effort into identifying causal relationships among complex financial variables to improve quality and timeliness of decisions.

Using AI agents to operationalize these relationships can deepen our understanding of market movements, particularly after major events or policy changes.

Janse: If President Trump can give the cup to a European nation* and say, “You're the best of the world”, I'm happy.

*[We guess that means Spain then! Ed]

Like Roy Batty in Blade Runner, Janse has “seen things you people wouldn’t believe”. There’s a lot to learn from someone who has stared into the balance sheet abyss for a whole damn economy and found the way back.

He also looks at the CFO role in an expansive way and is thinking hard about what comes next for finance teams.

But despite all the talk of tech, Janse knows the people side of finance is more important than ever.

So, for CFOs who struggle to make new friends, it’s time to step outside your comfort zone.