By Andrew C. Moyle, Grace Erskine, and Charlotte Collins

As leading global financial and FinTech centres, the UK and Singapore will benefit from strengthening their cybersecurity alliance.

On 13 June 2019, the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced that they will be working together to strengthen cybersecurity in their countries’ financial sectors.

The regulators have characterised the aims of this new collaboration as “identifying effective ways to share information and exploring potential for staff exchanges”.

All three regulators have identified cybercrime as an increasing global problem. Speaking about the new initiative, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, said, “The average cost of cybercrime for financial services companies globally has increased by more than 40% over the past three years. Cyber risk is not constrained by geographic boundaries, making international cooperation essential to address this growing threat”.

The three regulators intend to agree a Memorandum of Understanding to underpin this collaboration. The press release indicates that the UK regulators are also pursuing a similar goal in several other countries.

Cyber risk has become a key focus in recent years, with the UK regulators placing an ever-increasing emphasis on financial services firms needing to be prepared to respond appropriately in the event of an attack. The regulators acknowledge, however, that the threat is global and that they themselves have a role to play in increasing cyber resilience. This collaboration marks an important step for the UK regulators in advancing global cybersecurity.