European Central Bank Gauges Lenders’ Risks From AI

The European Central Bank is reportedly examining the risks banks face from the AI sector.

The ECB is asking lenders for further details on their loans to areas such as data centers, Bloomberg News reported Monday (Feb. 23), citing sources familiar with the matter.

At the same time, the ECB is holding workshops to see how banks are employing artificial intelligence, the report added. Bloomberg notes that these efforts highlight the way regulators are recognizing AI’s potential to shake up the banking industry.

Banks and private credit companies around the world have invested trillions into building out AI, whether that means development companies, data centers or energy supply, the report added.

PYMNTS has contacted the ECB for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

The ECB workshops center on things like business models, governance, and risk management. A source told Bloomberg that at least one bank understood the ECB’s wish to signal the need for caution when it comes to lending to sectors like data centers.

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These efforts are happening at a time when AI agents are becoming more deeply ingrained into compliance queues, cash management dashboards and payment routing engines.

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It’s a shift that “marks the first real test of whether financial institutions trust AI with operational authority,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month.

“Unlike earlier generative AI tools that responded to prompts, agentic systems can plan, reason and execute multistep workflows across systems with limited human intervention,” the report said. “Financial institutions are embedding these systems into compliance, treasury, risk and payments infrastructure, signaling a shift from automation pilots to production-grade deployment.”

Agentic AI workflows…

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