Finance

Bank Regulation and Risks to Financial Stability | The Regulatory Review

Published

3 weeks ago

May 30, 2026

Bank Regulation and Risks to Financial Stability | The Regulatory Review

Scholars examine bank and cryptocurrency regulation and assess potential risks to financial stability and resilience.

Federal banking regulators recently proposed rules to implement the Basel III Endgame framework. Global banking regulators developed the Basel III framework after the 2008 financial crisis to strengthen bank regulation, supervision, and risk management through a set of international standards. The final set of rules to implement the framework has been dubbed “Basel III Endgame.”

Although regulators originally planned to finalize and implement the Basel III accord by the beginning of 2023, countries have repeatedly delayed implementation while tailoring the framework to national interests and as banks and policymakers around the world increasingly embrace a more deregulatory approach.

The updated proposal follows a 2023 proposal from the Biden Administration that drew criticism for threatening to impose burdensome capital requirements on U.S. banks that could reduce lending and credit availability. Regulators argued that strengthening risk-based capital requirements for large banks would promote financial stability and resilience, but critics contended that the proposal could instead restrict banks’ lending capacity and push lending and traditional bank activity into more lightly regulated shadow banking sectors, such as private credit.

The latest proposal departs significantly from the 2023 proposal and would reduce the regulatory burden on large banks. The banking industry has applauded the recent deregulatory push, but critics warn that this approach risks weakening bank regulatory infrastructure only a few years after several major bank failures revealed ongoing gaps in bank supervision. Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse in 2023 marked the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history and required major emergency intervention. Although U.S. bank regulators largely contained the fallout and prevented contagion risks, the episode highlighted ongoing systemic risks to financial stability.

Debate over U.S. banking regulation also coincides with financial innovation and the rise of cryptocurrency, which have upended traditional financial services. The proposal comes less than a year after Congress passed the GENIUS Act, which established a baseline framework for stablecoin issuance. The GENIUS Act represented a significant regulatory breakthrough in a rapidly developing industry but left open many questions about its implementation and the future of cryptocurrency and stablecoin regulation. Federal regulators recently proposed rules to begin implementing the GENIUS Act framework, which will take effect in January 2027.

In this week’s seminar, scholars explore and offer competing views on current risks to the banking system and financial stability and identify potential regulatory vulnerabilities, including new payment systems tied to cryptocurrency.

In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Stephen Cecchetti and co-authors advocate implementation of the Basel III Endgame standards and higher U.S. capital requirements for large banks. They argue that criticisms of the 2023 proposed regulations are not supported by data and that heightened capital requirements do not reduce bank lending. The authors warn that failure to align U.S. regulations with the international Basel III standards could start a deregulatory race to the bottom that would undermine global banking stability.
In an article in the University of Illinois Law Review, American University Washington College of Law Professor Hilary Allen explains that financial stability risks can arise from often-overlooked sources beyond the traditional banking sector, such as venture capital. Using the venture capital industry as a case study, Allen contends that speculative sectors such as cryptocurrency can pose risks when regulatory oversight is weak. She argues that effective banking regulation of emerging risks requires a more proactive, systemwide approach, including increased monitoring of risks arising from venture capital investment and more aggressive securities law enforcement against cryptocurrency activities.
In a Stanford Law Review article that predates the GENIUS Act, Gabriel Rauterberg and Jeffrey Zhang argue that shadow banking, including stablecoin issuance, should fall under securities regulators’ oversight. Shadow banking covers a broad range of activities that resemble banking but fall outside the traditionally narrow bank regulatory perimeter and lack banking regulation. As a result, shadow banking receives significantly less regulatory oversight, creating vulnerability and instability in the financial system. The authors contend that many shadow banking activities fall within securities law’s purview and that securities regulation should promote systemic stability by working with traditional bank regulation.
Financial regulation has not kept pace with the financial system’s rapid changes, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School Assistant Professor of Finance Yao Zeng asserts in the International Monetary Fund’s Finance & Development quarterly publication. Zeng frames stablecoins as innovative in form but economically familiar in function and financial vulnerability. He argues that although stablecoins promise faster, cheaper, and more accessible payments, their bank-like economic functions and lack of protections such as deposit insurance and lender-of-last-resort support create familiar risks to financial stability. Zeng proposes that regulation should depend more on function than label: if stablecoins perform bank-like monetary functions, they should provide similar safeguards.
In a Delaware Journal of Corporate Law article, Arthur E. Wilmarth argues that the GENIUS Act institutionalizes nonbank stablecoin issuance, a practice that carries severe economic risks and lacks offsetting benefits. Wilmarth contends that nonbank stablecoin issuance undermines traditional banking and allows nonbank entities, such as tech firms, to perform bank-like functions without proper regulatory safeguards. He argues that the resulting ecosystem carries significant risks for financial stability and maintains that stablecoin issuance should be limited to FDIC-insured banks to ensure that adequate protections safeguard depositors’ money.
In a recent article in the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Roanoke College’s Zane Mullins addresses common critiques of stablecoins and pushes back against the view that stablecoins pose risks to the financial system. Mullins proposes a narrow stablecoin framework that would allow stablecoin issuers to settle payments with common central bank reserves. He argues that this framework would mitigate credit and liquidity risk by giving all stablecoin issuers similar access to a common settlement medium. Mullins contends that the framework would also address interoperability concerns, promote a level playing field among issuers, and mitigate counterparty risk.

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Finance

LUMIQ Raises Strategic Funding to Become the AI Decision Layer for Financial Services

Published

6 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Press Room

LUMIQ Raises Strategic Funding to Become the AI Decision Layer for Financial Services

While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.

NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.

LUMIQ raises Strategic Funding to become AI decision layer for financial services

Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ

From AI that assists to AI that decides

For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.

The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.

LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ

This round funds four priorities: expanding go-to-market in the US and Southeast Asia; deepening LiteCone’s decisioning capabilities; extending the agent workforce across more financial-services roles; and building a partnership ecosystem with cloud hyperscalers, AI labs, and core banking and insurance platforms so LiteCone is embedded where institutions already run.

LUMIQ’s investors backed the round for the same reason its customers adopt LiteCone: agents already deciding in production, with auditability and control built in.

As a financial-services group, we know how much rests on getting regulated decisions right, at speed and at scale. LUMIQ has built AI agents that decide in production with auditability and control built in, the capability the industry has been moving toward. We are proud to lead this round and to support the team’s expansion across the US and Southeast Asia.
Lakshmi Iyer, Group President – Investments & CEO, Bajaj Alternates

Our conviction is grounded in what LUMIQ has already built. Their AI agents aren’t just built for the future. They are operating in production today, at speed. This combination is rare, and its value will only compound as the company scales globally.
Girish Jhunjhunwala, Fund Manager – PE and VC Investments, Bajaj Alternates

Financial services is one of the hardest categories to crack — regulated, risk-averse, and unforgiving of hype. LUMIQ has put agentic AI into live financial-services workflows and earned the trust of large institutions across the US, Southeast Asia and India. That is how a category-defining company in financial-services AI gets built, and we are proud to keep backing the team as they scale globally.
Kitty Agarwal, Partner, Info Edge Ventures

LUMIQ’s goal is to lead one category: auto-decisioning at production scale for financial services. Agents that act, not assist, and never compromise audit, compliance, or predictability.

About LUMIQ
LUMIQ is an AI-native financial services company. Through its LiteCone platform and a growing workforce of production AI agents, LUMIQ turns real financial-services roles — insurance underwriter, credit underwriter, claims adjudicator — into agents that are consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable. The company pairs deep domain expertise across banking, insurance, and capital markets with frontier AI. LUMIQ employs over 350 AI and data specialists, and has offices in New Jersey, Singapore, and Delhi NCR (India).

Web: www.lumiq.ai

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Finance

Consumer confidence plunges among younger adults

Published

16 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

Consumer confidence plunges among younger adults

Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.

GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.

However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.

Source: GfK

Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.

“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.

“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.

“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”

Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.

The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.

The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.

The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.

Finance

How US-Iran peace deal will affect our cost of living

Published

1 day ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

How US-Iran peace deal will affect our cost of living

“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” said Donald Trump on social media after he announced the signing of an interim peace deal with Iran on Sunday. Under the agreement – which Iran acknowledged included a 60-day negotiating period for a final deal – the president said that following retrieval of mines, there would be a “toll free opening” of the Strait of Hormuz.

But many of the finer details remain “unclear”, said The Guardian. There are questions over the “exact timing of the reopening of the maritime route, who will oversee safe passage and whether any conditions will be applied”.