The leaders of the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have cautioned that an escalating wave of cyber-attacks could erode public confidence in the financial system, with fraud now spreading through social media and apps as much as through banks.
According to The Guardian, both officials made their remarks during a panel on online fraud at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok. Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, cited recent reports of self-replicating AI agents taking over personal devices. He also referred to a hack on French supermarkets that pushed refrigerator temperatures as high as 50C.
The warning came shortly after the IMF raised its assessment of the threat to global financial stability to “elevated” on Tuesday. The fund named the prospect of a major cyber-attack as one contributing factor, together with rising borrowing costs and the danger of a sharp fall in AI stock valuations.
Bailey argued that criminals increasingly use social media platforms and apps, rather than conventional financial channels, to carry out fraud. He called on large technology companies to accept their share of responsibility.
To make the point, he compared these platforms with UK newspapers, which carry legal accountability for the accuracy of their content. He also urged that the technology criminals exploit should be deployed to defend the financial system.
Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist, said the damage from cyber-fraud had become severe enough that people might abandon formal finance entirely. She added that those on the margins of the financial system faced the greatest risk.
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said, “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 added, “If we don’t have trust in money, we don’t operate as a society.”
On platform liability, Bailey 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 continued, “I don’t go around pointing the finger at people and saying: ‘You’re bad.’ What I have said is: ‘Look, there is responsibility all around.’ And we need to evolve to a world where everybody understands this responsibility, and everybody is then a part of addressing the problem.”
Bailey also said, “We must get the social media companies involved because a lot of this fraud is transmitted through those channels.” He added, “I’m going to use a sporting metaphor: this technology is arming the offence but it can also arm the defence, and it must do.”
IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said, “I was born and grew up on the other side of the iron curtain. We didn’t trust the system. What did we do? I would have my dollars in a shoebox under my bed. “And I worry, today, that unless we figure out how to get ahead of this curve, given the speed, the scale and the cost of fraud growing up, we may end up with lots of people with shoeboxes under their beds.”
She added, “Imagine what would happen if trust disappears or is eroded to a point that people no more have the courage to be included.”
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
