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Controlling Technological know-how in Finance: Global Methods for the Digital Age




Opening Remarks by Deputy Controlling Director Bo Li




November 10, 2021















Superior early morning. I hope you are all nutritious and perfectly. It is a terrific enjoyment to welcome you to this highly topical panel discussion on “Managing Technological know-how in Finance: World Ways for the Digital Age.” I am joined by a panel of eminent authorities who will present further insights into the challenges.
Technological alter has extended been a driver of human development. And the monetary sector has been no exception. From the improvement of double-entry e book-keeping, to the introduction of ATMs and modern-day payment systems—each wave of innovation has still left its mark.
The digital age has accelerated these developments:
- Detailed facts on our pursuits, transactions, and behaviors are now staying captured in huge amounts as the World-wide-web Of Items and mobile connectivity have exploded about the world.
- Big improves in computing energy used to this info are earning Synthetic Intelligence—or “AI”—less of a Hollywood movie fantasy. And, a lot more and far more, AI programs accomplish jobs that usually call for human intelligence.
- Meanwhile, the news is loaded with tales of the hottest hack of laptop systems and ensuing decline of assistance and individual facts.
These developments are intertwined technologically, but we are only starting to comprehend quite a few of the worries. From the viewpoint of fiscal regulators, the critical issue is how to reap the advantages of technological know-how in phrases of economic inclusion, efficiency, danger administration, and oversight, even though simultaneously running the economic steadiness and integrity dangers.
In 3 individual and recent papers, IMF team have discovered robust complementarities throughout these problems. They issue to the want for adapting policy methods and regulation to these new problems, and to the want for increased cross-border cooperation to handle dangers that do not have national boundaries. Shortly, we will check out these subject areas additional with the panel today, but enable me now highlight briefly the findings from these three workstreams.
1st, on the electronic overall economy and info.
In today’s digital age, information has come to be a useful, globally moveable good. But relocating it across borders requires nations around the world to have coherent policies that build have confidence in. With no world ideas for controlling info, we could deal with deepening electronic fault strains involving nations, as large information swimming pools come to be ever more isolated. This would be in particular high priced for lesser and lower-money nations. The excellent matter is that lately G7 international locations have introduced some critical concepts for cross-border movement of knowledge, and that is a incredibly superior commence.
Our knowledge can electric power open finance and AI that can make societies a lot more successful, driving advancement, employment, and finance. But there are also dim sides. Data can be captured without the need of our effective consent by significant platforms—creating new monopolies and security threats, and posing challenges to nations around the world to stability unique privateness with desires to guard data from cyber attacks.
These troubles have important implications for advancement, security, and the global process, which are at the main of the IMF’s mandate and suggests world cooperation is essential to address them. Today, our panel will discuss how policymakers can tackle vital worries all around details and the electronic overall economy that span money balance and inclusion, opposition, and privacy.
Second, on AI and device finding out.
The adoption of these technologies in the financial sector has accelerated in the latest many years and is now considerably reaching. Quick adoption of AI and machine studying in finance can boost efficiency, enhance the client knowledge, and reinforce danger management. They also power the equipment employed by regulators to bolster prudential oversight and support the implementation of monetary and macroprudential insurance policies. Feel of far more successful offer chains, or lending to earlier unbanked modest businesses close to the environment.
But these systems also carry hazards, including from opacity, bias, and the scope for new sources of systemic danger, such as from bigger interconnectedness. Policymakers will want to confront these concerns as they take into account opportunity regulatory methods. And, as we will discuss shortly, the comprehensive extent of the strengths and weaknesses involved with these technologies is nonetheless to be totally understood.
Third, on cyber risk.
The profusion of data and digital platforms that hook up the earth has also increased possibilities for malicious cyber hackers to disrupt sectors that depend on digital techniques. A person of the undesirable results of the new digital economic system and developments in engineering is that it widens the attack surface area, particularly within just the economical sector, which is at the forefront of details technology as effectively as technologies adoption.
In the current previous, offer chain assaults and ransomware assaults have hit the headlines a lot more frequently. Consequently, it is not surprising that cyber threat is one particular of the topmost concerns of governments, enterprises, and people. In the economic sector, facts confidentiality and integrity as very well as the easy working of data methods, are constantly threatened by cyber attackers. This creates a danger to monetary stability—and is one particular that calls for attention. Fiscal techniques are at different states of readiness to regulate these kinds of assaults, and the global reaction is fragmented. Our panel dialogue will cover the hottest IMF assessment in this place, which has identified major gaps that, if addressed, could noticeably decrease cyber hazard, and support safeguard worldwide fiscal security.
All round, technological developments in finance should really be broadly welcome, collectively with preparations to capture their benefits and mitigate likely challenges to the monetary system’s integrity and safety. But lots of measures are wanted to reinforce domestic and global policy frameworks on facts, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity to encourage cooperation amid countries and regulators, and to construct capacity.
I appear forward to discussing these troubles with our distinguished panel right now.


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