Large technology firms (big techs) are rapidly expanding their footprint in the payment system and in financial services. Big tech services can bring welcome innovation and competition to financial services, helping to enhance efficiency and financial inclusion. But they also raise thorny issues for regulators.
For a start, their heavy use of customer data (through the data-network-activities, or DNA, feedback loop) raises new challenges around financial stability, competition and data protection, which fall under the mandates of different public authorities. With user data from their existing business lines in e-commerce and social media, and by harnessing the inherent network effects in digital services, big techs can scale up rapidly in payment, credit, insurance and investment services. And proposals for global stablecoins combine these issues with the risk of fragmentation of the monetary system, with a reduced role for central bank money at the heart of the system.
Join the conversation on social media using #BISResearchConference #RegulatingBigTech
About the conference
How should authorities regulate big tech to promote the public interest?
This conference brought together central bank Governors, senior policymakers, researchers from central banks and academia, and other stakeholders to discuss how best to regulate big tech in finance to promote the public interest.
Regulating big tech in the public interest
The challenges of big tech in finance
Research session: Implications of big tech in finance
Policy panel: Competition issues around big tech in finance
Fintech, big tech and bank collaboration in payments in India
China's experience with regulating big tech
Governors' panel: Big tech and data in finance
Research session: Data in digital markets and money
Policy panel: Bringing data protection, competition policy and financial regulation together
Day 1 - 6 October
Big tech between financial regulation and anti-trust
13:00 - 13:15
Agustín Carstens (General Manager, BIS) | Speech
13:15 - 13:55
Jason Furman (Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, Harvard Kennedy School) | Presentation
14:00 - 14:50
Chair: Hyun Song Shin (Economic Adviser / Head of Research, BIS)
| Big tech banking | |
| Paper Presentation | Jorge Padilla, Senior Managing Director, Compass Lexecon Miguel de la Mano |
| Platform-based business models and financial inclusion | |
| Paper Presentation | Karen Croxson, Head of Research, Financial Conduct Authority Jon Frost Leonardo Gambacorta Tommaso Valletti |
Chair: Benoît Cœuré (Head, BIS Innovation Hub)
- Elsie Addo Awadzi (Deputy Governor, Bank of Ghana)
- Tobias Adrian (Financial Counsellor and Director, International Monetary Fund)
- Douglas Arner (Kerry Holdings Professor in Law, University of Hong Kong)
- Catherine Batchelor (Director, Digital Markets Unit, Competition and Markets Authority)
- Cristina Caffarra (Senior Consultant, Charles River Associates)
Moderator: Fernando Restoy (Chair, Financial Stability Institute)
Dilip Asbe (Managing Director and CEO, National Payments Corporation of India)
Day 2 - 7 October
Big tech, competition and privacy in the digital age
13:00 - 13:20
Yi Gang (Governor, People's Bank of China)
13:20 - 14:50
Moderator: Gillian Tett (Chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large, US, Financial Times)
- Roberto Campos Neto (Governor, Central Bank of Brazil)
- Alejandro Díaz de León (Governor, Bank of Mexico)
- Klaas Knot (President, Netherlands Bank)
- Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus (Governor, Central Bank of Malaysia)
- François Villeroy de Galhau (Governor, Bank of France)
15:00 - 15:50
Chair: Jean-Charles Rochet (Geneva School of Economics & Management)
| Paper Presentation | Daron Acemoglu (Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on "Harms of AI" |
| Paper Presentation | Markus Brunnermeier (Edwards S Sanford Professor of Economics and Director of the Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University) on "The digitalization of money" (with Harold James and Jean-Pierre Landau) |
Chair: Stijn Claessens (Head of Financial Stability Policy, BIS)
- Alberto Bacchiega (Director – Financial Services, European Commission)
- Diane Coyle (Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge)
- Urszula McCormack (Partner, King & Wood Mallesons)
- Aiaze Mitha (Digital Ambassador, UN Capital Development Fund)