The Federal Reserve held rates at 3.50–3.75% as Brent crude surged past $112 a barrel amid the Iran conflict and Strait of Hormuz closure, with Chairman Powell describing the oil shock as potentially having "only temporary economic effects" while markets began pricing the possibility of rate increases rather than the cuts the dot plot projects. Continue reading ►

The EU AI Act approaches full applicability for high-risk systems in August 2026 while the United States pursues what the industry has termed "permissionless innovation," forcing multinational banks to maintain parallel compliance architectures for the same AI models deployed across jurisdictions. Governor Waller's speech on operationalising AI at the Fed underscored the philosophical divide. Continue reading ►

The European Central Bank held rates steady at 2.50% on Thursday, as expected, but President Lagarde's press conference struck a notably hawkish tone. The governing council cited "persistent services inflation" and warned that premature easing could unwind two years of hard-won credibility. Markets now price the first cut no earlier than September. Continue reading ►

The Bank of Japan published minutes from its February meeting revealing a three-way split on the pace of further tightening. Governor Ueda's faction favours gradualism; two members pushed for a 25-basis-point hike at the March meeting to counter yen weakness. The yen traded at 151.40 to the dollar by Friday's close, its softest level since November. Continue reading ►

Brazil's central bank raised the Selic rate by 100 basis points to 14.25%, the fifth consecutive increase. The move, widely anticipated, reflects Brasilia's struggle to contain inflation expectations that have drifted above the 3% target since October. Governor Galipolo warned that fiscal policy remains "the binding constraint on monetary credibility." Continue reading ►

The Federal Reserve has appointed Dr Sarah Chen as its first Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, a newly created position reporting directly to the Board of Governors. Dr Chen joins from Google DeepMind, where she led safety research for financial applications. The appointment signals that the Fed intends to develop internal AI governance capacity rather than rely solely on external supervisory guidance. Continue reading ►

Global investment-grade corporate bond issuance hit $185 billion in the first week of March, the busiest start to any month on record. Treasurers are locking in funding before what several large banks privately describe as a "window of vulnerability" around the US tariff escalation schedule in April. Spreads remain historically tight at 87 basis points over Treasuries. Continue reading ►

Citadel Securities filed with the SEC for a banking licence, a move that would make the market-maker subject to Federal Reserve supervision but grant access to the discount window and the interbank payments system. The filing marks the most significant blurring of the broker-bank boundary since the 2008 crisis. Continue reading ►

Shanghai's CSI 300 index fell 4.2% on Wednesday after the National People's Congress set a GDP growth target of "around 5%" without announcing the large-scale stimulus package that foreign investors had anticipated. The sell-off was concentrated in property and infrastructure names. Southbound flows from Hong Kong turned negative for the first time in six weeks. Continue reading ►

Stripe Capital has surpassed $12 billion in cumulative loan originations since launching in 2019, the company disclosed in a product update. The embedded lending service, which extends credit to Stripe merchants based on payments data rather than credit scores, now operates in 16 countries. Charge-off rates remain below 3%, the company said, outperforming comparable consumer credit benchmarks. Continue reading ►

JPMorgan Chase disclosed in a regulatory filing that its AI-assisted credit underwriting system now processes 62% of all consumer loan applications without human review. The system, deployed across the retail bank since January, has reduced average decision time from 4.3 days to 11 minutes. Default rates on AI-approved loans are tracking 18 basis points below the human-reviewed cohort after two months. Continue reading ►

SWIFT announced a consortium of 23 banks will begin live testing of its AI-powered cross-border payment routing system in April. The system uses a transformer model trained on three years of settlement data to predict optimal routing paths, with the aim of reducing failed transactions by 40%. Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, and BNY are among the first participants. Continue reading ►

The Bank of England published a discussion paper on "algorithmic systemic risk," warning that the concentration of financial decision-making in a small number of foundation models could create correlated failure modes that existing stress-testing frameworks cannot capture. The paper invites responses by 30 June and signals that model-level regulation is under active consideration. Continue reading ►

The Bank of Japan has deployed a large language model in its internal policy briefing pipeline, according to a disclosure in the central bank's annual technology report. The system synthesises incoming economic data and research papers into structured summaries for the Policy Board ahead of rate meetings, with the aim of reducing the time governors spend on preliminary reading from approximately four hours to forty-five minutes. Continue reading ►

HSBC has disclosed that a transformer-based reconciliation model deployed across its global trade finance operations has reduced the labour required for exception handling by 40%, equivalent to approximately 1,200 full-time roles. The system identifies mismatches in trade documentation with 99.2% precision, the bank said, against 94.7% for the previous rules-based system. Continue reading ►

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision released its final guidance on the treatment of crypto-asset exposures, tightening the criteria for Group 1 classification and imposing a 2% cap on aggregate crypto holdings relative to Tier 1 capital. The rules take effect on 1 January 2027. Industry bodies estimate compliance costs at $2–4 billion across the G-SIB population. Continue reading ►

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a proposed rule requiring banks to provide customers with machine-readable exports of all transaction data within 24 hours of request. The "open banking" mandate, if finalised, would take effect in phases beginning March 2027. The American Bankers Association called it "operationally unrealistic" and pledged to challenge the timeline. Continue reading ►

Singapore's Monetary Authority fined three digital payment token service providers a combined S$4.8 million for deficiencies in their anti-money-laundering controls, the largest enforcement action in the city-state's crypto sector. The MAS said it had identified failures in transaction monitoring, customer due diligence, and suspicious transaction reporting during examinations conducted in late 2025. Continue reading ►

The European Commission published draft technical standards requiring financial institutions to commission independent algorithmic explainability audits for any AI system used in credit decisions, insurance underwriting, or market surveillance. The standards, implementing Article 13 of the EU AI Act, set a two-year compliance window and require lenders to retain audit records for seven years. Continue reading ►