Change control gaps are the leading cause of non-malicious ICT incidents at banks, ahead of design and testing failures, capacity issues and external dependency failures, according to a new Basel Committee on Banking Supervision report drawing on a survey of 16 jurisdictions, 12 of which contributed incident observation data covering 2022 to 2024.

Mizuho Bank is strengthening transaction banking as a strategic pillar of its Asia Pacific franchise. Its adoption of SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity forms part of a broader effort to connect clients across the region's growing trade, capital and treasury flows.

Malaysia's Islamic banks face pressure to lower acquisition costs and serve younger customers. Hazrizal Hassan, director of digital banking at Bank Muamalat Malaysia Berhad, discusses the bank's cloud-native ATLAS platform, its early customer acquisition results and how it embeds Shariah governance alongside Islamic lifestyle services.

Digital banks with loan balances above $250 million are significantly more likely to be profitable, as scale and product diversification strengthen revenue. Most reach breakeven within three to six years. For those still unprofitable past the seven-year mark, N26 in Germany, Varo Bank in the US, Lunar Bank in Denmark and CIMB Bank Philippines among them, face an increasingly difficult case for continued investment.

Malaysia’s second-largest lender by assets reported steady income growth and lower costs, while net interest margins showed early signs of stabilisation amid a challenging macroeconomic backdrop.

Anouska Ladds of Mastercard and Johnson Poh of Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority argue that AI agents will scale only when financial institutions can govern, trace and supervise their actions inside live operations.

With the Strait of Hormuz under severe disruption, the world is facing a major physical shock to oil supplies through which around 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products transit. The disruption is reshaping FX behaviour, with energy exposure increasingly driving currency moves while the Chinese yuan shows early signs of relative resilience.

First Bank of Nigeria Limited (FirstBank) has aggressively rolled out Digital Xperience Centres (DXCs)—fully automated, self-service hubs designed to provide customers with 24-hour access to banking services. The initiative reflects the bank’s effort to combine digital innovation with its extensive physical branch network as customer expectations shift toward more flexible banking options.

Barney Frank, former US Congressman and Dodd-Frank co-author, passed away at 86. He reshaped financial regulation and remained influential in global debates on banking, innovation, governance and systemic risk.

Lewis Sun, global head of digital currencies, corporate and institutional banking at HSBC, explains how tokenised deposits can give corporate treasurers 24/7 access to commercial bank money while preserving the safety, compliance and yield characteristics of bank deposits.

Grab Holdings Limited will make Indonesian digital lender Superbank a subsidiary after Singtel transfers its stake to GXS Bank and lifts Grab’s effective ownership above 50%, expanding its financial services footprint in Southeast Asia.

HBL CTO Faisal Anwar believes large-scale banking transformation increasingly depends on whether incumbent institutions can modernise continuously while keeping customer operations, payments and resilience environments running live at scale.

RHB's integration of anti-money laundering and fraud management, combined with an SME cyber self-assessment tool, points to a broader challenge: financial crime defence increasingly depends not only on bank-side controls, but on how well institutions can help customers address the operational weak points scammers exploit.

The macroeconomic outlook for 2026 remains uncertain, with both the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revising downward their growth forecasts for the Eurozone amid rising geopolitical risks.

Techcombank is investing in centralised AI governance and a modular agent platform designed to transform its software development lifecycle. Tran Hoang Quan, chief technology officer of Techcombank, discusses the bank's approach to AI governance, data architecture, hallucination mitigation and productivity outcomes.