Safety & Soundness

Artificial intelligence is amplifying the cyber threats facing the global financial system and could trigger a system-wide shock unless regulators and banks build stronger defenses, the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday.

HSBC has booked a $400-million “fraud-related” charge tied to the collapse of UK bridging lender Market Financial Solutions, hitting first-quarter profits at Europe’s biggest bank and exposing one of the most material indirect transmission channels yet between private credit and a global systemically important lender.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned Wall Street executives this week to warn that a new artificial intelligence model from Anthropic could mark the start of a more dangerous phase in cybersecurity.

Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr warned on Tuesday that stablecoins pose risks related to money laundering, financial stability, and reserve quality, as U.S. banking agencies work on regulations to implement new federal rules for the sector.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has discussed ways to tighten the Treasury’s oversight of the Federal Reserve by borrowing elements from the Bank of England model, in a move that could significantly reshape the central bank’s relationship with the government.

U.S. regulators on Thursday proposed easing bank capital rules, a move that would allow the country’s largest lenders to hold billions of dollars less in capital and mark a major win for the sector.

ING plans to cut about 1,250 jobs worldwide this year under a cost-saving program that will rely more heavily on artificial intelligence, with many of the reductions expected in anti-money-laundering operations.

Digital money transfers have overtaken cash for the first time in the U.S.-to-Mexico remittance corridor, marking a shift in the world’s largest flow of cross-border family payments and intensifying pressure on traditional cash-based providers.

West Africa has become a major and expanding logistics, warehousing, and redistribution hub in the global cocaine trade, with the market in the region larger than ever and increasingly damaging to public health, governance, and security.

Banco Master SA’s former chief executive Daniel Vorcaro was returned to custody for a second time in roughly three months as a widening probe into the collapsed lender added allegations of threats, intimidation, and illegal access to sensitive law-enforcement data.