Cyber threat to trust in money: Bank of England and IMF chiefs warn financial system at risk
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey and IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned that rising cyber-attacks and cyber-fraud risk undermining trust in money and the financial system, speaking at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok.
Cyber threat to trust in money: Bank of England and IMF chiefs warn financial system at risk
Trust in money at stake
The governor of the Bank of England and the IMF's managing director issued a joint warning that rising cyber-attacks could undermine trust in the financial system. They spoke on a panel about online fraud at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok.
Andrew Bailey framed the debate about AI as a question of confidence in technology, arguing that human control is what achieves that trust. His concern went further than technology alone: he told the panel that society itself rests on confidence in money.
"If we don't have trust in money, we don't operate as a society."
The words are Bailey's, delivered as he set out what he sees as the stakes of the cyber threat to trust in money.
AI agents and hacked fridges
Bailey pointed to recent headlines he described as alarming to illustrate how the threat is evolving.
- self-replicating AI agents hijacking personal devices
- a French supermarket hack that heated fridges up to 50C
Georgieva's shoebox warning
IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said the toll of cyber-fraud had grown so great that people could decide to opt out of the formal financial system altogether. She drew on her own background as a Bulgarian economist born and raised on the other side of the iron curtain, saying that out of distrust she would keep her dollars under her bed.
"I would have my dollars in a shoebox under my bed."
Given the speed, scale and cost of growing fraud, she warned that many people could end up doing the same. In her view the danger falls hardest on those already at the edges of the system, with the threat particularly acute for people on the fringes of the financial system.
Big tech liability and the Bangkok blueprint
The IMF had already sounded the alarm the day before: on Tuesday it warned that a big cyber-attack was one factor raising the global financial stability threat level to "elevated", alongside higher borrowing costs and an AI share price crash risk.
Bailey turned to where much of the fraud now happens. Fraud is frequently committed through social media platforms and apps rather than traditional financial channels, he said, urging big tech to take responsibility. He contrasted this with outlets such as newspapers, which are responsible for the veracity of everything they publish. On platforms, he saw a gap: "there's no real liability to the provision of the platform to what's on it", which in his words produces "the good, the bad and the incredibly ugly and downright criminal and terrible".
His proposals included:
- involving social media companies, because a lot of the fraud is transmitted through their channels
- recognising that "there is responsibility all around", with society evolving so everyone is part of addressing the problem
- arming the defence as well as the offence, using the same tools as the cybercriminals: "this technology is arming the offence but it can also arm the defence"
The panel also launched a concrete step: a new set of international principles for avoiding cyber-fraud in financial institutions, called the Bangkok blueprint.
