This weekend, SIFMA coordinated its 2025 Industry-Wide Business Continuity Test, bringing together over 90 firms, exchanges, and service providers to verify their ability to operate through adverse conditions. The annual exercise helps ensure the securities industry can withstand disruption, protect investors, and maintain confidence in US markets. "The successful test outcome underscores the ability of the securities industry to operate through adverse conditions," said Charles Desimone, Managing Director, Technology and Operations. In parallel, Regulation SCI entities completed coordinated testing to further strengthen operational preparedness.

Financial firms are increasingly embracing tokenization, with custodians leading the way, asset managers gaining momentum and wealth managers preparing to follow, according to a recent Broadridge report. More than 50% of early adopters cite lower operational costs as a key benefit, while more than 80% recognize the potential for enhanced client engagement and operational simplification through direct distribution. However, 73% of respondents cite regulatory uncertainty as a major concern.

JPMorgan Chase has introduced an in-house artificial intelligence tool to assist employees in writing year-end performance reviews, leveraging a large language model to generate review drafts based on prompts, providing a significant efficiency boost. The bank has integrated the tool into its LLM Suite, which has already been adopted by 200,000 employees for various tasks, including code review and contract analysis.

The US, Europe, and China are pursuing diverging paths in digital money, with Washington backing privately managed, dollar-linked stablecoins while the ECB and PBOC push state-backed digital currencies. The clash reflects a wider geopolitical struggle over financial control, as stablecoins bolster US dominance and CBDCs aim to secure national monetary sovereignty.

President Donald Trump has nominated Mike Selig, a longtime crypto ally and current SEC Crypto Task Force general counsel, to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with Selig pledging to help make the US the "Crypto Capital of the World." While a market-structure bill is stalled in the Senate, the CFTC is expected to play a central oversight role in crypto markets if it advances.

The Federal Reserve has unveiled the mechanics behind its stress tests for large banks, marking a major shift in transparency. The Fed board voted 6-1 to advance the changes, which include the release of hundreds of pages of documents detailing the models and methodologies used. This move is a response to long-standing complaints from major lenders about the opacity of the tests and a legal challenge from the banking industry.

US cybersecurity progress is regressing, with nearly a quarter of previously implemented recommendations losing their status, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The expiration of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 has left financial institutions and critical infrastructure without liability protections, hindering threat intelligence sharing.

Bank of England policymaker Jonathan Hall has warned that some UK bond market participants are underprepared for a financial crisis, potentially necessitating public bailouts. Hall noted that risk-taking has shifted to less-regulated nonbank financial institutions, which have low levels of self-insurance. Hall also emphasized the need for international cooperation to ensure foreign firms are properly regulated.

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