In a latest report, the Financial Stability Oversight Committee (FSOC) has highlighted several vulnerabilities and emerging threats in the U.S. financial system and recommends actions that should be taken to ensure financial stability and to mitigate systemic risk that would negatively affect the economy.
The report noted that cyber threats and vulnerabilities continue to be a pressing concern for companies and governments in the U.S. and around the world. It added that significant investment in cybersecurity by the financial services sector over the past several years has been critical to reducing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and recommends government agencies and the private sector to continue to work to improve and enhance information sharing, security controls and network monitoring.
The FSOC also touched upon the latest hot topic in financial industry – digital currencies and blockchain technologies. It said that distributed ledger systems could enable market participants to manage many types of bilateral or multilateral transactions without the direct participation of trusted third parties. It noted the potential of the technology to mitigate risk and improve resilience in financial networks, enhance market transparency, improve speed and accuracy of settlement systems, and more.
However, the report also emphasized that the as market participants do not have much experience working with the technology, they are exposed to certain risks. To that end, it also mentioned the increase in bitcoin trade confirmation delays and some trade failures that have occurred as the speed with which new bitcoin transactions are submitted exceeded the speed with which they can be added to the blockchain.
“Like most new technologies, distributed ledger systems also pose certain risks and uncertainties which market participants and financial regulators will need to monitor”, it said. “To the extent that distributed ledger systems ultimately reduce the importance of … more centralized intermediaries, regulators will need to adapt to the changing market structure.”
