Bank of England and IMF bosses issue stark warning on cyber threat to trust

Andrew Bailey and Kristalina Georgieva voice concerns about financial system on panel about online fraud

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

“If you try to say what’s at the heart of this debate about AI – for me, it’s about trust in technology and it’s about human control to achieve that trust in technology,” he said.

Pointing to the key importance of technology in underpinning today’s financial system, he added: “If we don’t have trust in money, we don’t operate as a society.”

“I was born and grew up on the other side of the iron curtain,” the Bulgarian economist said. “We didn’t trust the system. What did we do? I would have my dollars in a shoebox under my bed.

She said this threat was particularly acute for people on the fringes of the financial system. “Imagine what would happen if trust disappears or is eroded to a point that people no more have the courage to be included,” she said.

Bailey stressed that fraud was now frequently committed via social media platforms and apps, not just traditional financial channels – and urged big tech to take responsibility.

Instead, the governor said: “We’ve moved into quite an extreme position of, well, these platforms are open to everybody and there’s no real liability to the provision of the platform to what’s on it. Guess what? Everything’s on it. You know, the good, the bad and the incredibly ugly and downright criminal and terrible.”

He added: “We must get the social media companies involved because a lot of this fraud is transmitted through those channels.”

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.

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