Banks Turn to Credit Insurance to Stretch AI Lending Limits
Lee Harris & Ortenca Aliaj, Financial Times
Banks are increasingly turning to credit insurance to lay off risks tied to their data center loans as lenders seek to stretch internal limits to pour more money into the AI boom.
Barclays recently bought insurance to hedge its exposure to AI infrastructure loans, according to a person familiar with its program, while HSBC has also explored using the fast-growing product. JPMorgan Chase considered whether to use the product in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the discussions. However, the US’s biggest bank ultimately decided against buying the insurance, one of the people said.
Read moreAI Agents Scramble Banks’ Fight with Fintechs
Michael Stratford & Aiden Reiter, Politico
AI is crashing into the long-running fight between banks and financial technology companies.
A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule now before the White House Budget Office about who controls consumers’ financial data could be a vehicle to regulate the new crop of AI agents roaming through the financial system, according to bank lobbyists familiar with the discussions…
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Will AI Throttle the Retirement Money Machine?
Spencer Jakab, Wall Street Journal
We’ve all heard that the AI boom needs a lot of resources—power, water, chips, copper, land.
But money is what makes the world go round. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett reassured nervous investors this week that there’s no shortage of capital for the AI build-out. At what price, though?
Read moreA Sensible Guide to Surviving the AI-Hacking Apocalypse
Matteo Wong, The Atlantic
Since late last year, a small but growing chorus of cybersecurity experts has been warning that AI models were pushing the internet toward a sort of cataclysm.
Hospitals, banks, utilities, basically anything and everything connected to the web could be hacked. Over the past month or so, those scenarios have come alive in almost spectacular fashion: Last month, AI was used to find major security flaws in software used by 70 percent of websites, prompting governments to take down their websites as a precaution.
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