The Financial Stability Board (FSB) set out a 2026 work programme covering financial vulnerabilities, nonbank financial intermediation, cross-border payments, digital innovation, artificial intelligence (AI), operational resilience, regulatory modernisation, crisis preparedness and implementation monitoring.
At its June Plenary, the FSB reaffirmed that vulnerabilities remain elevated and confirmed active work across several of these areas. A cluster of external outputs is expected in October 2026, including an implementation-monitoring review, a report on regulatory and supervisory modernisation, final practices for financial authorities’ use of AI, analysis of cross-border issues involving digital assets and the annual cross-border-payments progress report.
FMI WORLD analysis: The strategic significance lies less in any single report than in their convergence. Financial market infrastructures (FMIs) increasingly operate across connected dependencies: cloud and AI services, nonbank liquidity, digital assets, payment interoperability, data standards and cross-border supervisory expectations. Decisions taken separately in those areas can combine into material requirements for technology architecture, resilience, governance and capital allocation.
The October cluster will therefore test the FSB’s ability to convert global diagnosis into coordinated, implementable direction. Strong coordination could give FMIs and their participants clearer investment signals and reduce duplicative national requirements. Weak coordination could widen regulatory fragmentation, increase compliance costs and leave operational or liquidity risks migrating between sectors and jurisdictions.
The programme also highlights a change in financial-stability supervision. Authorities are moving beyond the resilience of individual regulated entities toward dependencies that sit across the market: critical technology providers, data quality, nonbank leverage, cross-border payment chains and the implementation consistency of agreed reforms.
Central counterparties, central securities depositories, payment systems, trading venues, central banks, regulators and supervisors, banks, nonbank financial institutions, resolution authorities, technology and AI vendors, data providers and firms operating across multiple jurisdictions.
Watch whether the October outputs establish common priorities, measurable implementation expectations and credible coordination mechanisms. Particular attention should go to the treatment of third-party technology concentration, AI governance, nonbank-finance data gaps, digital-asset cross-border risks and progress toward faster, cheaper and more interoperable cross-border payments.
The practical test is whether authorities and FMIs can translate the package into sequenced investment and supervisory plans without multiplying overlapping national requirements. Also watch the implementation-monitoring review for evidence that the FSB will concentrate more explicitly on outcomes rather than the formal adoption of standards.
FMI WORLD NEWSROOM story reference: FMIF-20260824-001.