Is it established, or is it new and unknown technology? We also know that attitudes towards security and operational risk are important. But with tech firms rushing to offer new products to the market, there is the risk of insufficient emphasis on security. This is a risk that must be monitored – not only for new products or for new players, but also for incumbent businesses. Tech giants like Google, Apple, and Alibaba look set to become dominant players. Their advantage comes from providing cross-border services and having already gathered significant information about users. They are already present in the Nordic marketplace. This development may lean towards monopolies, as it can create entry barriers for new and smaller players in the market. If that proves to be the case, it could have a negative impact on competition and go against the aims of the PSD2 (the recent EU Directive on payment services in the internal market (2015/2366). This risk is greater when the payment mechanisms are outside the jurisdiction of the relevant state. Then there is the question of supervision. Will the new solutions be supervised, and if so, how? The challenge here is that many new solutions are global, and thus outside the European Economic Area or the European Single Market. Such supervision thus requires crossborder cooperation among supervisors. The challenge for the supervisor is also to maintain a comprehensive overview of the market.
29 November 2018  Deputy Governor Rannveig Sigurðardóttir. Introductory remarks at the 2nd Annual Nordic Cyber in Finance Conference, Helsinki, 29 November 2018  Let me begin by saying that this conference is both timely and interesting for me, as I have only been in office for five months. Given that I come from the monetary policy department at the Central Bank of Iceland, cybersecurity has not been much on my agenda until now. It is, nonetheless, a very important topic. The Central Bank of Iceland, and other central banks are facing several new challenges in this area, both in the financial sector generally and central banking more specifically. Last week I attended an interesting macroprudential policy conference at Danmarks Nationalbank. The discussion paper prepared for that conference was called While the sun is shining, prepare for a rainy day. Sitting there, I pondered what the discussion paper for this conference today might be called. Perhaps something like The snowstorm is here – what do we wear? Cybercrime is now the world’s fastest-growing type of crime. It has shot up to second place on the list of the top ten business risks worldwide, after not even making the list five years ago. The financial sector is particularly important because it greases the wheels of our economies, and cyber risks pose mounting threats to the financial system. Developments since the emergence of the internet show that new technologies have brought with them new challenges.