By Gary Lynam, Managing Director EMEA, Protecht         Protecht’s survey of UK financial-services institutions offers important insights into 2024’s risk and resilience outlook. The survey highlights the strategic adaptations and investments banks are making to navigate a rapidly changing financial landscape, with the backdrop of regulatory evolution and increasing reliance on technology. These were the key survey findings: Geopolitical uncertainty and liquidity challenges: Banks are navigating a landscape marked by significant geopolitical tensions and liquidity constrain ..read more

By Alexander Jones, International Banker   ““Bidenomics is about growing the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down,” American President Joe Biden posted on X (then Twitter) on June 28, 2023. “It’s an economic vision, where we make smart investments in America, educate and empower American workers, and promote competition to lower costs and help small businesses.” With such an explanation, one would presume that Bidenomics would be an economic model that would be difficult to fault. And yet, as the United States president’s first term draws to a close in a few months ..read more

By Danny Butvinik, Chief Data Scientist, NICE Actimize   As technological advancement meets regulatory-compliance imperatives, financial institutions face a pivotal question: How can they harness generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to enhance innovation, efficiency and customer experience while adhering to strict governance and compliance standards? This question becomes even more pressing in light of the European Union’s (EU’s) Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), a groundbreaking piece of legislation designed to steer the development and application of AI within a framework that ..read more

By Nicholas Larsen, International Banker   Depending on one’s location, the evening of April 19 or the early hours of April 20 saw the Bitcoin block complete its eagerly anticipated reward halving, thus triggering a programmed cut in the rewards earned by the network’s miners. One of crypto’s most momentous and eagerly anticipated events, the halving finally came to pass amid burgeoning market bullishness that saw its price climb to uncharted territory above $73,500 just a month earlier. And with the landmark approval of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January by US regulators, as we ..read more

By Joseph Moss, International Banker   “Failure to follow the workplace excellence expectations applicable to your role within two weeks of the date of this notification may result in further disciplinary action,” warned the Bank of America (BofA) in a letter sent out to an employee in January, as seen by the Financial Times. The letter was one of many issued to staff who, in the bank’s assessment, were not showing up to the office frequently enough, instead choosing to work from home. Banks across the board are seeking to tighten physical-attendance regulations dramatically. But with the ..read more

By Valerie Hernandez, International Banker   After taking office on December 10, President Javier Gerardo Milei wasted no time in reversing the plan of the previous administration under Alberto Fernández to take Argentina into the powerful BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economic group of rising emerging economies, informing the bloc’s leaders less than three weeks later that it was not an “opportune” moment for Argentina to become a full member. With the rabidly pro-Western Milei now at Argentina’s helm, much of the goodwill that Buenos Aires had been steadily amass ..read more

By Hilary Schmidt, International Banker   Increasingly proving to be among the most innovative technologies within the cryptocurrency sector, decentralised finance (DeFi) is quickly establishing itself as a new paradigm for global finance. And with trillions of dollars’ worth of transactions already settled through a multitude of applications that are accessible to anyone online, DeFi technology has a bright and disruptive future—that is, if it can remain on the right side of an increasingly stringent regulatory regime. DeFi leverages distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) to offer on-cha ..read more

By Monica Johnson, International Banker   According to recent figures published by the UK Government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the United Kingdom’s 2022-23 cost-of-living crisis triggered the steepest rise in 30 years in the number of UK citizens falling into “absolute poverty” (defined as living in a household with an income below 60 percent of the median household income in 2010-11, adjusted for inflation). Even with rising costs of necessities such as food and energy proving hugely painful for most Britons and often drastic measures still having to be taken to save enou ..read more

By Valerie Hernandez, International Banker   On February 6, Fitch Ratings downgraded Bolivia’s Long-Term Foreign Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘CCC’ from ‘B-‘. This was perhaps not surprising given that the South American country’s international reserves have declined in recent years, reaching critical levels in 2024 and representing a profound risk to the nation’s macroeconomic stability. With a distinctly unfavourable balance-of-payments position and a questionable capacity for servicing its considerable outstanding debt, Bolivia faces serious threats to its long-term economic ..read more

By Joseph Moss, International Banker   On March 17, Japan’s central bank, the Bank of Japan (BoJ), raised its benchmark short-term interest rate for the first time in 17 years. With a rise to 0–0.1 percent from -0.1 percent, the BoJ also finally ended its eight-year negative-interest-rate policy—the last to do so among the world’s major economies—and abolished its controversial yield-curve control policy, which had capped long-term sovereign bond yields at 1 percent. The moves have raised hopes that a sense of “normalcy” may soon return to Japan’s economy after more than 30 years of econo ..read more