BIS Innovation Summit 2021: How can central banks innovate in the digital age?

Central banks today need a deep understanding of new technologies, as well as forums in which to share and pool that knowledge. And we need to work together to develop public goods for our communities. How can central banks be a catalyst for innovation in the digital age and apply new technologies to solve real-world problems in the financial system?

Cross-border "multi-CBDC" arrangements: what is different from current payment systems, what are the opportunities and what challenges remain?

The G20 has made enhancing cross-border payments a priority. This panel session looks at the potential of wholesale CBDCs in particular to make cross-border payments faster and cheaper.

Bénédicte Nolens, Head of BIS Innovation Hub Centre Hong Kong, discusses Project mCBDC Bridge and its aim to leverage distributed ledger technology to alleviate the current pain points in making cross-border fund transfers.

This panel discusses how technologically enabled financial innovation is spurring new business models, applications, processes, and products with an associated material effect on financial markets and institutions and the provision of financial services.

Howard Lee, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, discusses why central bankers must not only keep up with, but also stay ahead of the unprecedented pace of digital innovation.

Technology firms and the innovation they are driving have the potential to add huge amounts of value to the emerging digital economy. However, many of these new approaches challenge the norms of our current monetary and financial systems, and the regulatory systems designed to keep them serving the public interest. 

Decentralised finance (DeFi) applications offer financial services using decentralised technology, such as blockchain. DeFi is increasingly providing individuals with an alternative to traditional financial systems, but legal risks, enforceability, compliance and liability issues loom large.

Project Helvetia demonstrates the functional feasibility and legal robustness of settling tokenised assets with a wholesale CBDC.

Rio is a prototype of a central bank-specific, real-time capable market monitoring platform.

Central banks are innovating and adopting state-of-the-art technologies to transform their capabilities. This session will provide insights from central bank technologists working at the frontier of this innovation, who will describe and discuss their work using the latest data, analytics, AI and cloud technologies.

Governor Campos Neto from the Banco Central do Brasil and Governor Diaz de Leon from the Banco de México discuss how central banks in the region can innovate in the digital age.

Andrea Maechler, Member of the Governing, Board Swiss National Bank, discusses the importance of building bridges to assess emerging risks and new forms of collaboration across the central banking community.

Christine Lagarde, Mark Carney, and Benoît Coeuré, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub, discuss the role of innovation in supporting sustainable growth.

Andrew Bailey, Governor, Bank of England; Stefan Ingves, Governor, Sveriges Riksbank; Christine Lagarde, President, European Central Bank; Tiff Macklem, Governor, Bank of Canada; François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor, Banque de France; Jens Weidmann, President, Deutsche Bundesbank;  John C Williams, President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and BIS Senior Advisor Ross Leckow discuss what central bank innovation means to them.  

The last 12 months have seen the launch of the first general purpose central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This panel looks at the drivers for supply and demand for CBDCs and discusses the roles central banks and the private sector may have in developing and distributing such currencies. 

The BIS Innovation Hub is supporting the CPMI and FSB roadmap to improve cross-border payments. In March 2021 we partnered with SWIFT to run a week-long hackathon focussed on using ISO 20022 messaging and modern APIs to build better cross-border payment processes.

Around the world, the pandemic has accelerated the shift to digital payments. In this session, we will hear from world leading payments system operators, digital banks, and fintechs on how they have prepared for this digital transformation and what it will take to compete in the digital economy going forward.

Jacqueline Loh, Deputy Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore argues that central banks need to be agile and to be able to fail (and learn) within boundaries.