Table of Contents

Controlling Engineering in Finance: World wide Methods for the Electronic Age




Opening Remarks by Deputy Managing Director Bo Li




November 10, 2021















Superior morning. I hope you are all healthier and well. It is a fantastic pleasure to welcome you to this hugely topical panel dialogue on “Managing Technological know-how in Finance: International Methods for the Digital Age.” I am joined by a panel of eminent industry experts who will supply further insights into the concerns.
Technological alter has lengthy been a driver of human progress. And the monetary sector has been no exception. From the progress of double-entry guide-trying to keep, to the introduction of ATMs and fashionable payment systems—each wave of innovation has left its mark.
The electronic age has accelerated these traits:
- Detailed data on our actions, transactions, and behaviors are now remaining captured in huge amounts as the Online Of Factors and mobile connectivity have exploded all-around the environment.
- Big raises in computing electricity utilized to this data are building Artificial Intelligence—or “AI”—less of a Hollywood movie fantasy. And, far more and additional, AI units perform duties that generally require human intelligence.
- Meanwhile, the news is stuffed with stories of the hottest hack of computer methods and resulting reduction of assistance and personal knowledge.
These traits are intertwined technologically, but we are only beginning to fully grasp many of the issues. From the point of view of financial regulators, the crucial problem is how to experience the rewards of engineering in phrases of monetary inclusion, efficiency, chance management, and oversight, although concurrently handling the money steadiness and integrity hazards.
In 3 different and latest papers, IMF personnel have found powerful complementarities across these concerns. They point to the need for adapting plan techniques and regulation to these new problems, and to the need for enhanced cross-border cooperation to deal with hazards that do not have nationwide boundaries. Shortly, we will investigate these topics even more with the panel these days, but enable me now highlight briefly the results from these 3 workstreams.
1st, on the digital economy and info.
In today’s electronic age, facts has become a important, globally transportable superior. But moving it across borders calls for nations to have coherent policies that construct rely on. With out global ideas for controlling info, we could encounter deepening digital fault lines involving nations, as significant information pools develop into significantly isolated. This would be specifically expensive for more compact and lessen-money nations. The good detail is that a short while ago G7 nations have announced some important ideas for cross-border motion of details, and that is a incredibly very good start off.
Our facts can electric power open up finance and AI that can make societies additional productive, driving growth, employment, and finance. But there are also darkish sides. Knowledge can be captured without our powerful consent by big platforms—creating new monopolies and stability threats, and posing problems to international locations to stability particular person privacy with requirements to secure info from cyber attacks.
These issues have essential implications for advancement, balance, and the international method, which are at the core of the IMF’s mandate and usually means world cooperation is required to tackle them. These days, our panel will explore how policymakers can handle important troubles all around details and the electronic financial system that span monetary steadiness and inclusion, competition, and privacy.
Second, on AI and machine studying.
The adoption of these systems in the monetary sector has accelerated in modern a long time and is now significantly reaching. Immediate adoption of AI and equipment learning in finance can increase efficiency, improve the customer working experience, and fortify chance administration. They also electrical power the applications employed by regulators to reinforce prudential oversight and support the implementation of monetary and macroprudential procedures. Imagine of much more efficient offer chains, or lending to previously unbanked modest businesses all around the environment.
But these systems also provide threats, which include from opacity, bias, and the scope for new sources of systemic risk, which include from larger interconnectedness. Policymakers will need to confront these concerns as they think about possible regulatory strategies. And, as we will discuss shortly, the total extent of the strengths and weaknesses associated with these systems is nevertheless to be fully recognized.
Third, on cyber threat.
The profusion of knowledge and electronic platforms that hook up the earth has also increased alternatives for malicious cyber hackers to disrupt sectors that count on digital methods. 1 of the undesirable results of the new digital financial state and developments in technological innovation is that it widens the assault area, significantly inside the economic sector, which is at the forefront of information technology as effectively as technological innovation adoption.
In the recent past, source chain attacks and ransomware attacks have hit the headlines more consistently. Thus, it is not astonishing that cyber threat is a single of the topmost fears of governments, firms, and individuals. In the money sector, knowledge confidentiality and integrity as properly as the sleek functioning of info units, are consistently threatened by cyber attackers. This generates a threat to monetary stability—and is just one that involves consideration. Financial programs are at different states of readiness to handle these assaults, and the intercontinental reaction is fragmented. Our panel dialogue will protect the most up-to-date IMF assessment in this space, which has recognized major gaps that, if tackled, could substantially minimize cyber risk, and assist safeguard international monetary security.
Over-all, technological advancements in finance really should be broadly welcome, collectively with preparations to capture their gains and mitigate opportunity dangers to the monetary system’s integrity and basic safety. But numerous ways are required to bolster domestic and worldwide coverage frameworks on data, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity to boost cooperation between international locations and regulators, and to build ability.
I look forward to talking about these difficulties with our distinguished panel now.


IMF Communications Department
MEDIA RELATIONS
Press OFFICER: Nadya Saber
Mobile phone: +1 202 623-7100E mail: [email protected]




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