"Good" People from ‘Bad’ Places

Deconstructing the Geography of Trust

There’s a quiet, corrosive logic at the heart of global finance — the idea that trust can be mapped by geography. That some places are safe and others are suspect. That a passport can reveal a person’s integrity, or a jurisdiction can predict behaviour.

It’s nonsense, of course. But it’s dressed up in data, wrapped in regulation, and enforced by institutions that should know better.

I’ve spent my career across these markets andnd one thing I’ve learned — over and over — is that where someone comes from tells you very little about whether they can be trusted.

I’ve met entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe who operate with a level of transparency that would put Western CFOs to shame. I’ve worked with family offices in Pakistan who’ve upheld multi-generational reputations for fairness, discretion, and integrity. Yet they struggle to open accounts, access capital, or even get a call back from a compliance department — because their passport sets off alarms.

Meanwhile, walk into a bank in Mayfair with the right accent and the right background, and you’ll be offered champagne and a credit line before anyone checks your credentials. It’s as much theatre as it is risk management.

This geographic shorthand — Tier 1 equals trust, Tier 3 equals threat — is lazy. It’s a relic of post-colonial thinking dressed up in compliance language. And it’s damaging, not just morally, but systemically. Because it creates a distorted picture of where real risk lies and blocks capital from reaching the people who could use it most effectively.

What we need is a radical rethinking of how trust is measured. Forget borders. Look at behaviour.

Build systems that analyse patterns, not passports. That can distinguish between actual red flags and the noise of inherited stigma. That understand that a founder operating in Lagos, under intense economic and regulatory pressure, might actually be a better bet than someone coasting in Luxembourg.

This isn’t just possible — it’s necessary. Because as long as we equate location with legitimacy, we’re not practising risk-based compliance. We’re practising discrimination at scale. And let’s be clear: this isn’t about loosening controls. It’s about making them smarter. More contextual. More attuned to nuance. Because true compliance doesn’t punish people for where they’re from. It understands why things look the way they do — and knows how to ask better questions.

That’s where technology comes in. AI can be trained to read context. To detect consistency across multiple dimensions. To see integrity in forms that don’t fit a Western template. But only if we feed it better inputs — not just more data, but more thoughtful frameworks.

We need to stop pretending that Western systems are neutral. They’re not. They’re based on a specific cultural lens. And if we want to build a truly global financial infrastructure, we need to replace that lens with a kaleidoscope.

Because trust is not the property of a few “safe” jurisdictions. It’s a human trait. And humans — honest, resilient, capable humans — exist everywhere. If our systems can’t see that, then it’s not the people who are broken. It’s the system.

It’s on us all to solve it.