Author Archives: Mark McKenzie

COVID-19: Financial Stability and Business Continuity Management – Part A

In many conference speeches, training presentations and papers since the end of the Great Financial Crisis, we often heard or read that “we don’t know when or from where the next crisis will come, but it will surely come.” It is too early to say that COVID-19 is or will precipitate another large scale global […]

Coronavirus and the Global Economy: Central Banks’ Policy Responses

Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in China, central bankers and policymakers have kept a very sharp eye on the health of the global economy. In some cases, Covid-19 has been compared to SARS in 2003, which some economists estimate cost the global economy $45 billion. At that time China only represented 8% […]

Scary Spear-Phishing Attack

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 I experienced a scary spear-phishing cyber attack. Emotionally I was humiliated. I felt extremely vulnerable and violated. I felt helpless and deeply incapacitated. What is a spear-phishing attack? According to www.kaspersky.com, spear phishing is an email or electronic communication scam targeted towards a specific individual, organization or business. The purpose […]

Emerging Cyber Threats to the Financial Sector

Technology has given birth to a new era in banking that brings efficiency gains for financial institutions, improved access to services by consumers and fosters financial inclusion. In the field of payments, services are increasingly instant, 24/7 and globally available. Non-bank participants, meanwhile, are disrupting traditional intermediation. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are just two of the innovations promising to revolutionise financial services.

What’s Done is Done: Economic Payment Finality in the Blockchain – Part 1

Ten years after the publication of the white paper of “Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer system electronic cash system” by Satoshi Nakamoto, perhaps its greatest contribution to society is that it has forced regulators, policymakers, bankers, academics and technologists to have deep-hearted and painful conversations on some very important issues and topics.