Overview
- At the City’s Mansion House event, FCA chief Nikhil Rathi said the UK is not prepared for geopolitical and cyber shocks and urged finance to be treated as part of national defence.
- Rathi warned of a protection gap, citing under‑insurance of catastrophe and cyber risks and vulnerabilities tied to privately owned data, payments, cloud and satellite infrastructure.
- Referencing recent cyberattacks on major UK firms, Rathi called for greater private investment in security and floated a national resilience fund to back dual‑use technologies and critical systems.
- PRA head Sam Woods rejected proposals to exclude sovereign bonds from leverage ratio calculations, calling the change highly risky and invoking lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank failure.
- Woods listed threats from opaque non‑bank lending, cracks in US credit, AI bubble risk and concentrated life reinsurance, while saying UK banks are resilient ahead of the Bank of England’s December capital review.