FSB heralds era of digital innovation and global collaboration
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has published its FSB Work Program for 2025. The FSB is an international body that provides recommendations based on monitoring and assessment of issues and vulnerabilities in the global financial system. The annual FSB Work Program outlines the key goals and areas of focus for the year, including a brief overview of the strategies and initiatives the FSB intends to implement to meet those objectives.
The approach of the FSB is useful to gauge the approach of Australian regulators and markets. The issues identified by the FSB, and the strategies the FSB recommends, will readily inform Australia’s approach. Overall, digital innovation appears to be a hot topic of choice, closely followed by global stability and collaboration.
The issues
The FSB has highlighted a number of global financial challenges that it intends to address, including:
- digitalisation;
- climate change; and
- the consequences of changing interest rates and various shifts in the macroeconomic environment.
The strategies
The FSB intends to address these issues with key strategies being:
- Supporting global co-operation on financial stability. The FSB will focus on continuing surveillance frameworks with a view to monitoring new financial technologies such as tokenisation and crypto assets. The FSB states that its aim is to promote financial stability in a rapidly evolving financial and economic environment.
- Enhancing the resilience of the non-bank financial institution (NBFI) sector, while preserving its benefits. The FSB intends to implement a workplan to address non-bank data use, availability and quality, as well as finalise policy recommendations on NBFI leverage, which will be delivered to the G20.
- Harnessing the benefits of digital innovation while containing its risks. The FSB has acknowledged that digitalisation is changing the financing industry. They will continue to work on enhancing operational and cyber resilience, particularly the implications of crypto-assets, tokenisation and AI. This work will include thematic peer reviews, reports on the monitoring of AI adoption, and finalisation of the format for an incident reporting exchange.
- Address the financial risks of climate change. The FSB stated it will continue to assess climate vulnerabilities and organise workshops with external stakeholders to share information and exchange views on progress and challenges in assessing and responding to climate-related financial vulnerabilities and disclosures.
- Enhancing cross-border payments. This work by the FSB will include analysis of legal, regulatory and supervisory conflict between jurisdictions with a view to identifying challenges blocking certain sectors or regions. It will also include outreach to certain private sectors.
- Completing resolution reforms. The FSB intends to focus on implementing its Key Attributes of Effective Resolutions Regimes for Financial Institutions framework. This framework sets out the core elements the FSB considers necessary for an effective resolution regime, including the need for a clear and transparent regime, a designated administrative authority responsible for exercising resolution powers over firms, and safeguards to ensure the hierarchy of claims and rights of creditors.
Indicative Timeline
In the Work Program, the FSB also published an indicative timeline for key publications and events, including:
- April 2025 – final format for Incident Reporting Exchange.
- July 2025 – release of workplan to address issues related to non-bank data availability, use and quality.
- July 2025 – climate roadmap progress report.
- October 2025 – thematic peer review of crypto-assets recommendation implementation.
- October 2025 – report on vulnerabilities associated with the use of artificial intelligence in finance.
- October 2025 – implementation monitoring review progress report.
This article was prepared with the assistance of Law Graduate Roger Miyumo.
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