{"id":802733,"date":"2026-10-14T21:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T21:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/802733\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T21:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T21:48:11","slug":"bank-of-england-and-imf-bosses-warn-of-cyber-threat-to-trust-in-financial-system-bank-of-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/802733\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank of England and IMF bosses warn of cyber threat to trust in financial system | Bank of England"},"content":{"rendered":"

The heads of the Bank of England<\/a> and the International Monetary Fund have issued a stark warning that rising cyber-attacks risk undermining trust in the financial system.<\/p>\n

Speaking on a panel about online fraud at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, pointed to alarming headlines about self-replicating AI agents hijacking personal devices<\/a>, and the French supermarket hack that heated fridges up to 50C<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you try to say what\u2019s at the heart of this debate about AI \u2013 for me, it\u2019s about trust in technology and it\u2019s about human control to achieve that trust in technology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pointing to the key importance of technology in underpinning today\u2019s financial system, he added: \u201cIf we don\u2019t have trust in money, we don\u2019t operate as a society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Echoing his concerns, the IMF\u2019s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva<\/a>, said the toll of cyber-fraud was now so great that people could decide to opt out of the formal financial system altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born and grew up on the other side of the iron curtain,\u201d the Bulgarian economist said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t trust the system. What did we do? I would have my dollars in a shoebox under my bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I worry, today, that unless we figure out how to get ahead of this curve, given the speed, the scale and the cost of fraud growing up, we may end up with lots of people with shoeboxes under their beds.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said this threat was particularly acute for people on the fringes of the financial system. \u201cImagine what would happen if trust disappears or is eroded to a point that people no more have the courage to be included,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her comments followed a warning from the IMF on Tuesday that the possibility of a big cyber-attack was one of the factors raising the global financial stability threat level<\/a> to \u201celevated\u201d, alongside higher borrowing costs and the risk of an AI share price crash.<\/p>\n

Bailey stressed that fraud was now frequently committed via social media platforms and apps, not just traditional financial channels \u2013 and urged big tech to take responsibility.<\/p>\n

He contrasted today\u2019s environment with the legal status in the UK of outlets such as newspapers, which are responsible for the veracity of everything they publish.<\/p>\n

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Instead, the governor said: \u201cWe\u2019ve moved into quite an extreme position of, well, these platforms are open to everybody and there\u2019s no real liability to the provision of the platform to what\u2019s on it. Guess what? Everything\u2019s on it. You know, the good, the bad and the incredibly ugly and downright criminal and terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI don\u2019t go around pointing the finger at people and saying: \u2018You\u2019re bad.\u2019 What I have said is: \u2018Look, there is responsibility all around.\u2019 And we need to evolve to a world where everybody understands this responsibility, and everybody is then a part of addressing the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe must get the social media companies involved because a lot of this fraud is transmitted through those channels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bailey called for the same tools that are being used by cybercriminals to be put to work protecting the financial system. \u201cI\u2019m going to use a sporting metaphor: this technology is arming the offence but it can also arm the defence, and it must do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel event at which the pair were speaking was to launch a new set of international principles for avoiding cyber-fraud in financial institutions, called the Bangkok blueprint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The heads of the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have issued a stark warning that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-802733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}