Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, raised their concerns while speaking at the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group in Bangkok, Thailand. Bailey highlighted alarming incidents including self-replicating AI agents hijacking personal devices and a French supermarket hack that raised fridge temperatures to 50 degrees Celsius. He stressed that trust in technology was central to maintaining confidence in money itself. The IMF had previously warned that a major cyber-attack was among the factors elevating the global financial stability threat level to elevated, alongside higher borrowing costs and the risk of an artificial intelligence share price crash.
Georgieva warned that cyber-fraud could become so widespread that people abandon the formal financial system altogether. Drawing on her experience growing up behind the Iron Curtain, she said people might resort to keeping cash in shoeboxes under their beds rather than trusting banks. She emphasised the danger for those already on the fringes of the financial system, saying eroded trust could prevent people from participating in formal finance.
Bailey called for big technology companies to take greater responsibility, noting that fraud now frequently occurs through social media platforms and apps rather than traditional financial channels. He contrasted this with the legal liability newspapers face for their published content. Bailey urged the technology sector to treat cybercrime-fighting tools as defensive weapons alongside their offensive uses.
The warnings accompanied the launch of the Bangkok blueprint, a new set of international principles designed to help financial institutions avoid cyber-fraud.