Banking regulators in the US and Europe are stepping up efforts to contain the risks AI poses to banks, Reuters reported, citing six people familiar with the matter. Some fear that cyberattacks or rogue AI agents could shake the financial system.
In the US, the Federal Reserve and two other bank regulators are questioning banks about how they use advanced AI, two sources said.
They want to know if banks use Chinese-built tech, use AI agents for cyber defence, and can control systems that act on their own.
Regulators also want to know what limits banks put on AI agents, whether humans still make key decisions, and how banks would shut those systems down. All three US agencies declined to comment to Reuters.
In Europe, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank are pushing banks to improve their plans for recovering from attacks, three people said.
Both worry that fast progress in AI could cause serious disruption in financial markets sooner than expected.
UK supervisors want the largest banks to review backup systems that are fully separate from their main IT systems, two sources said.
These can keep a bank running if its main systems are hacked, and the UK would rather work with banks than set new rules, they added.
The ECB gave lenders until the end of October to produce plans against AI-enabled cyber threats, Reuters reported. Eurozone banks are also being asked to map where they use AI, including through outside suppliers, so they can switch systems off and restart them safely.
“The adoption of AI is often outpacing the ability to put the controls in place,” Michael Woodbridge, a cybersecurity partner at Grant Thornton, told Reuters.
The scrutiny follows a run of AI-linked security incidents. Earlier this month, security firm CrowdStrike said a person in China likely used a Chinese-built AI agent and Anthropic’s Claude Code to hack South Korean banks. OpenAI’s rogue agents also broke into Hugging Face earlier this year.
On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund also warned that a major cyberattack could damage confidence in financial markets, in a stability report that flagged risks from AI.