Recently, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) published important reports about the risks inherent in crypto-finance.  They make unpleasant reading for some. The BIS concludes that crypto’s inherent structural flaws make it unsuitable to play a significant role in the monetary system, whilst the FSB proceeds to list series of major risks arising from crypto-assets. Andrew Cunningham sets out how board directors and risk professionals should respond to the latest work from the BIS and the FSB.

There are a wide range of topics hitting the headlines when it comes to board effectiveness and what boards need to focus on. Diversity and inclusion, climate risk, artificial intelligence - the list goes on. The boardroom agenda is ever increasing, and understandably so given the environment businesses today find themselves in. These issues have tended to eclipse core questions related to the conduct of board meetings and Andrew Cunningham provides us with a useful reminder of the key areas boards should remember to focus on, including the importance of agenda setting.

There is no doubt that young people are interacting with banks, pension funds and other financial service providers very differently from the way that previous generations did. Most obviously, they are interacting digitally and see little point in time-consuming face-to-face contact. We are also seeing a landscape in which customers interact with a variety of financial institutions, and switch between them more frequently than in the past. These changes may well lead to new and emerging risks, but Andrew Cunningham argues that the real threat that young people present to financial institutions lies in the increased financial vulnerability of young people themselves.