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UK councils struggle to balance budgets
Seven out of ten councils said they would struggle to balance their budgets following the government’s Autumn Statement, a survey found. Leaders of those bodies said that they would have to raise council tax by the maximum level permitted, cut services and dig into reserves. The County Councils Network wrote to the Secretary of State for…
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UK’s national infrastructure faces catastrophic cyber-risk
The UK government said that the country could be brought to a standstill by a catastrophic ransomware attack, according to a report by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). While fraud risk was one of the most significant threats businesses and people face from hackers, attacks on the UK’s critical national infrastructure was “a new…
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Bank of England urged to improve diversity in decision-making
The Bank of England (BoE) faces a major overhaul of its internal culture, governance and appointments practices following a critical report by the House of Lords. A key criticism of the bank – and other central banks in Europe – is that they acted slowly to tackle high inflation since 2021. Those have been brought about…
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Financial firms stuck on cloud development
While cloud adoption by organisations accelerated during the pandemic, many financial organisations have chosen not to move back-office functions onto such external servers, according to a survey by Capgemini. The percentage of survey respondents who said they had started moving services onto the cloud increased from 37 per cent in August 2020 to 91 per cent…
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Talent shortages hamper risk management efforts
Doing business has become more difficult and uncertain since 2021 and shortages of talent in key areas are hampering risk management efforts, according to a recent survey by Aon. While the risk rankings of the bi-annual survey show little change, the conditions in which those increasingly inter-connected risks arise has evolved rapidly, the report said. Cyber-attacks…
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UK moves step closer to stable coin regime
The Bank of England (BoE) together with regulatory authorities have launched a series of documents which will form the basis for a new sterling-denominated stable coin regime for Britain. Papers published in November 2023 by BoE, the Financial Conduct Authority and a letter from the Prudential Regulation Authority provide a roadmap aimed at creating clarity over how such instruments will…
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Government focuses on understanding AI’s future
The UK government has called for better understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) to balance the potential risks and opportunities in a discussion paper on the topic. There are a wide range of potential social risks associated with the development of AI, the report said. Those could include, for instance, the degradation of the information environment as…
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Regulatory change and emerging risk top compliance concerns
Compliance functions and risk managers said that their top strategic priorities over the coming 18 months are keeping abreast of regulatory changes and mitigating emerging risk, according to Thomson Reuters. Half of respondents to the survey underpinning the report said they had noticed a recent shift in their organisations from viewing compliance as a tick-box exercise…
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Cyber risk tops threats to financial system
Cyber risk is the leading systemic risk for the financial sector, according to the most recent report by the Bank of England. And while only 38 per cent said a high-impact event was likely in the short term – 58 per cent thought it likely in the medium terms. These figures had edged down since the…
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UK recession threat increases need for flexibility
It is increasingly likely that the UK economy could move into recession in the last quarter of 2023, according to analysts. The UK’s private sector output dropped in September for the second month running, according to a well-tracked report by S&P Global and CIPS. While not disastrous in itself, the rate of decline accelerated – with…
