If you run a business with any kind of international cost or revenue, you need to know this: FX volatility isn’t a ‘risk factor’ any more. It’s the environment you operate in. It’s permanent. And if your 2026 budget still thinks it’s just noise, then you’re going to struggle.
Businesses that ignore this don’t just get surprised. They lose money.
A 3% currency move might sound small. But if you run a £20m cost base across borders, that’s £600,000 gone. Vanished. Not because you did anything wrong, but because you didn’t plan for the movement you knew was potentially coming.
This is where budgets fall apart.
And this is the year you stop letting that happen.
The consequences are clear:
- Reacting costs more than preparing
- Timing matters more than direction
- Systematic beats opportunistic every single time
Budgeting for 2026 means accepting this upfront and designing around it, not hoping your average rate assumptions survive contact with reality.
Why it matters now – and why 2026 will catch people out
Most of the companies we initially speak to still build FX assumptions as if the world is stable. They smooth rates. They pick optimistic mid-points. They assume “the past year was freakish”.
Then the next year starts, and they spend the following 12 months scrambling.
But what’s the biggest budgeting mistake companies make?
It’s the way they approach FX inside the budgeting process.
Most teams don’t have a consolidated real-time view of their exposure. Revenue sits in one place. Costs in another. A few hedges lie forgotten with a broker. Treasury tries to piece is together in a spreadsheet while the market moves.
This lack of visibility is where budgets break because you can’t protect what you can’t see and you can’t plan what you can’t quantify. But most importantly, you can’t make informed hedging decisions when your exposure lives across five systems and three human memories.
That isn’t risk management. It’s guesswork.
And guesswork is expensive.
At Alt21 we take a different approach because we know that planning for stability creates risk and planning for movement creates resilience.
Before talking product, we talk clarity. Before designing hedges, we build visibility. That’s the mindset shift we’ve instilled in our company. The problem is that most businesses still haven’t even realised they need to make it too.
Once a business sees its true exposure, the right hedging strategy becomes obvious and often simpler.
The transparency problem the FX industry won’t talk about
Let’s be blunt.
The FX industry thrives on opacity.
Many banks or brokers create this complexity because complexity creates margin.
They’re often all about hidden mark-ups and confusing structures. Pricing tends to shift depending on who’s selling and who’s asking. Advice that isn’t really advice, it’s just product push.
This is why so many companies don’t trust their hedging partners and why they end up hedging late, poorly or not hedging at all.
Alt21 takes a different stance: clear prices, clear structures and no smoke and mirrors.
Because if you can’t see your exposure and you can’t see the cost of managing it, you can’t make a good decision. And when volatility hits, bad decisions cost real money.
Earlier this year, an Alt21 client recently learnt this the hard way. They had a full hedging plan ready to go. They waited and waited and waited because a flashy salesman told them they thought the market would move in their favor… and then the market moved.
That delay cost them 3–3.5% of their entire hedging requirement, which was huge for them. Not because the plan was wrong, but because volatility arrived before they acted.
In today’s market, the risk of this happening is escalating.
A 2026 FX strategy that actually works
So, what does a modern approach look like?
- Clarity: A single view of what you earn, what you spend, where it is and in which currency. Not estimates or assumptions. Actual, current, dynamic exposure mapping.
- Design: Build a plan that fits your business, not someone else’s template. If your exposure is predictable, your hedging can be simple. If it shifts month to month, your plan should move with it. Some companies need forwards. Some need flexibility. Some need almost nothing. The magic isn’t the product. It’s the fit.
- Embedded execution: Hedging isn’t a once-a-year meeting. It’s an ongoing process. This is the part most businesses underestimate.
Alt21’s platform gives companies:
- 24/7 visibility over exposures
- a clear view of what’s protected and what isn’t
- the ability to adjust hedges in real time
- embedded execution so decisions turn into action immediately
A system that lets you act early, adjust quickly and see the true cost of every choice isn’t a luxury. It’s part of staying competitive.
Resilience beats prediction
Forecasts will continue to flood the market as 2026 approaches. Many will contradict each other. Some will be confidently wrong and that’s the nature of FX research.
The point isn’t to predict where currencies will land; it’s to build a financial system that works whether they move 1%, 3% or 10% against you.
When you design around clarity, structure and timely execution, volatility becomes manageable. It becomes something you plan with, not something you fear. It moves from a threat to a variable – important, but no longer destabilising.
Companies that succeed next year won’t be those who guess the right level. They’ll be those who understand their exposure and act early enough to protect it.
The decision point
FX volatility isn’t the problem. Pretending it will go away is.
Your exposure exists today. Your budget is being written now. And the market will move whether you prepare for it or not.
So, here’s the question:
Do you want to understand your currency risk now, or pay for it later?
If your organisation lacks a clear FX policy or if yours hasn’t been reviewed in years, this is the moment to address it. We help businesses define exposure properly, design strategies that reflect operational reality and implement protection with full transparency.
If you want a budget built on solid ground rather than hope, take the next step now.
Speak to us and we’ll help you build a 2026 FX strategy that protects your margins before the market challenges them.