High Commissioner @BarhamSalih met with H.E. Constant-Serge Bounda, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Congo.

They discussed working together to strengthen national systems, mobilise additional resources and support for the response, and the regional displacement situation

The cost of leaving people behind is rising.

The latest World Social Report shows that delaying investment in people has a measurable cost. A decade’s delay in social protection could mean losing 12% of economic output.

More on the #WorldSocialReport: un.org/en/desa/as-soc…

Growth has held up better than many expected, but the foundations are becoming more fragile. Excellent discussion with DPM Ekniti Nitithanprapas, FM @Pierrakakis, @olayemicardoso1, & FM @LuisCaputoAR on what’s next: rebuild buffers, reduce debt & get our economic house in order.

Work is the most effective counter to poverty.

That's why job creation & entrepreneurship are a must.

UNDP supports small businesses & entrepreneurs 🌍, especially marginalized groups, with training & seed funding to help families & communities thrive. go.undp.org/NTx

State-owned enterprises are key providers of public goods & services in strategic sectors from energy to transport.

Register to hear insights on how they are run, owned & overseen at the Ownership and Governance of State-Owned Enterprises report launch ➡️ brnw.ch/21x6r7J

BIS FSI Chair Fernando Restoy (G-24/AFI Policymakers' Roundtable, Bangkok, 13 Oct) argues financial health sits closer to central banks' core mandates than often assumed: household stress can feed back into financial stability and monetary transmission.

On the roundtable's crypto theme, he notes lower costs and remittance use cases, but flags volatility, fraud, and the absence of deposit-insurance-style protection, risks amplified where financial literacy is weaker. The test is whether digital access improves financial health, not only inclusion.

bis.org/speeches/20261…

The Financial Stability Board is consulting on eight high-level principles for regulatory and supervisory modernisation, requested by the US G20 Presidency (14 Oct).

The draft draws on a stocktake of 126 modernisation efforts reported by 24 jurisdictions and 3 standard-setting bodies. Authorities would review frameworks on an ongoing basis, tailor them by size, complexity and risk profile, and act in a timely way on material risks while keeping the ability to act on emerging threats. Supervisors should adopt technology with governance and human oversight that complements, not replaces, judgement.

The stated guardrail: preserve or enhance existing resilience. Comments close 8 January 2027.

fsb.org/2026/10/regula…

BIS Papers No 175 (Iñaki Aldasoro, Oct 2026; bis.org 14 Oct): "Money and the architecture of trust."

Money is not primarily a medium of exchange, a commodity or a technology. It is an institutional achievement: interlocking promises sustained by trust. Trust at scale rests on hierarchical money anchored by a central bank, elastic credit disciplined by funding, and backstops.

The paper applies that frame to gold, bitcoin and stablecoins: the first two as assets that reject the social compact money embodies; stablecoins as private claims that seek to join it. Validation into the hierarchy, if pursued, comes with supervision, capital, reporting and, ultimately, backstops.

bis.org/publications/p…

ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone (Frankfurt, 6 Oct; via BIS 13 Oct) set out how the Eurosystem plans to keep central bank money as the anchor of digital finance.

Retail: a 12-month digital euro pilot with 36 payment service providers is planned from H2 2027, with the ECB aiming to be ready for a potential first issuance in 2029 if legislation concludes by end-2026. Two-thirds of euro area card payments rely on international schemes.

Wholesale: Pontes, launched 21 Sept, lets tokenised transactions settle in central bank money. It acts as the bridge that keeps tokenised deposits from different banks exchangeable at par rather than fragmenting into closed networks.

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BIS Working Paper No 1382 (Rashad Ahmed and Iñaki Aldasoro, published 13 Oct) tests whether stablecoins and bank deposits compete for the same funds.

Using weekly US data from January 2019 to June 2025, it finds they are partial substitutes: higher deposit rates are followed by slower growth in reserve-backed stablecoins. The effect is stronger for USDC than USDT and is not found for non-stablecoin cryptoassets.

If stablecoins become more widely used, they could affect bank funding conditions and monetary policy transmission. The authors note the paper does not establish that stablecoin growth necessarily reduces aggregate deposits or lending.

bis.org/publications/w…

Bank of Mauritius Governor Priscilla Muthoora Thakoor, opening an FSB Regional Consultative Group for Sub-Saharan Africa workshop (Port Louis, 15 July; BIS 13 Oct), says the region will fall short of the 2027 G20 cross-border payments targets.

Many intra-African payments still transit correspondent banks outside the continent, and Africa remains the costliest region for remittances, averaging above 8% on a USD 200 transfer.

Stablecoin uptake is partly a response to these frictions, she notes, but unfettered use can fragment payments and undermine monetary sovereignty, financial stability and integrity. Her prescription: connect national payment systems, adopt ISO 20022 and harmonise regulation.

bis.org/speeches/20261…

To #BeatPlasticPollution, data, knowledge and collaboration are critical.

The Global Plastics Hub brings together:
📚 2800+ knowledge materials
📊 70+ plastic lifecycle indicators
🌍 2000+ members

Explore the Hub: globalplasticshub.org

BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, with HKMA, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and ASTRI, published Project Aurum Phase 2 (13 Oct): an exploratory digital-cash PoC using encryption, BBS+ signatures, pseudonym-based ownership and zero-knowledge proofs to support privacy-preserving payments while retaining compliance mechanisms.

Framing: privacy and compliance need not be mutually exclusive. PETs can sit between complete anonymity and full transaction transparency, keeping payment integrity without routinely exposing sensitive data to parties that do not need it. Trade-offs remain on programmability, performance and operational complexity.

bis.org/publications/p…

Bank Negara Malaysia Governor Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour (IFCTF 2026, Kuala Lumpur, 6 Oct; via BIS 13 Oct): Malaysian banks and PayNet are working toward industry-wide fraud alerts that warn banks and customers before a transaction completes. A pilot with selected banks is targeted for H1 2027.

The base: since Oct 2025 the National Fraud Portal has piloted payment-network pattern analysis, and PayNet has flagged more than 1,600 suspicious accounts, many later assessed as presenting mule-related risks. About 95% of online fraud cases involve victims deceived into transferring funds themselves.

"As they automate deception, we must automate detection."

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The IMF and World Bank, with the Bank of Thailand, launch the Bangkok Blueprint for Fraud-Resilient Financial Services on 14 October at the Annual Meetings in Bangkok: 12 Key Considerations for tackling cyber-enabled fraud through a whole-of-ecosystem approach.

Bank of Thailand preview materials set out five building blocks: strategic and legal foundations; the full fraud lifecycle, from prevention to asset recovery; building on existing cybersecurity and AML/CFT frameworks to disrupt criminal networks; shared intelligence across sectors and borders; and consumer resilience.

Digital fraud is being treated as a threat to confidence in the financial system, not just a consumer issue.

imfconnect.org/content/imf/en…

FSB Chair Andrew Bailey's letter to G20 finance ministers and central bank governors (8 Oct; published 12 Oct ahead of the 15 Oct meeting) submits the Board's Sound Practices for the Responsible Adoption of AI, which he calls its first response on the topic.
Framed as a toolkit adaptable to firms' size, type and level of AI adoption, the practices cover organisation-wide governance, lifecycle management, cyber-risk mitigation and third-party oversight. Recalling risks flagged in August, Bailey points to AI-enabled cyber threats to critical financial institutions and market infrastructures, and the chance that a reassessment of AI-related valuations triggers a broader correction. He urges the G20 to champion the practices.

fsb.org/2026/10/fsb-ch…

The Financial Stability Board published a note on 12 October on cross-border vulnerabilities of global stablecoin arrangements, ahead of the 15 October meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors.

The integrity gap: unlike a bank with known depositors, a global stablecoin issuer may not know who holds its liabilities, where they are domiciled, or where redemption demand will materialise. Attributing stablecoin activity to specific uses or geographies is often not possible, and authorities rely mostly on private data compilers, creating comparability and credibility risks.

Market value: around $300bn as of mid-2026, 99% USD-pegged.

fsb.org/2026/10/global…

Bundesbank Executive Board member Fritzi Köhler-Geib (roundtable "Preparing for transformative AI", Brussels, 1 Oct; bis.org 8 Oct) treats frontier AI as a digital-sovereignty question, linking AI, chips, cloud, robotics and quantum computing.
Her proposal is an "AI Airbus": a European corporation that would build on an existing open-source model and host it on European infrastructure. Her case: Europe is "mostly price-takers in the IT sector", and "cybersecurity based on high-performance AI models is a matter of survival for Europe."
On dependency, the Bundesbank is tendering for EU-native cloud services, and the Eurosystem is working with EU-native cloud providers on programmes such as bank reporting.

bis.org/speeches/20261…

National Bank of Serbia Governor Jorgovanka Tabaković (FIC & EBRD Financial Services Conference, Belgrade, 30 Sept; bis.org 8 Oct) on innovation meeting regulation: AI can flag suspicious transactions and cut routine work, but responsibility cannot move to software. "There is no algorithm that will say… ‘I am responsible for the consequences'."

Trust is the red line, including cyber risk and dependence on a single technology provider. Concrete rails: IPS NBS processed 34.5 mn instant payments in 2026 Q2, and since May, Serbia applies SEPA Credit Transfer (NBS + 18 of 19 banks), giving faster cross-border payments without trading integrity for speed.

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Bank of Finland Governor and ESRB First Vice-Chair Olli Rehn (10th ESRB annual conference, Frankfurt, 2 Oct; posted on bis.org 8 Oct) flags two AI channels for financial stability. Citing the ESRB's July warning, he notes frontier models can raise the speed, scale and sophistication of cyberattacks, even as they may also strengthen defence. Separately, the AI investment boom involves large, concentrated exposures, with computing, chips and energy infrastructure increasingly debt-funded; a sharp valuation correction, he warns, could transmit through equity and credit markets.

bis.org/speeches/20261…