Joachim Nagel: Welcome address - Farewell symposium for Claudia Buch and Joachim Wuermeling

Welcome address by Dr Joachim Nagel, President of the Deutsche Bundesbank, at the Farewell symposium on the occasion of the farewell of Ms Claudia Buch, Vice-President of the Deutsche Bundesbank, and Mr Joachim Wuermeling, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main, 22 March 2024.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

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1 Words of welcome

Ladies and gentlemen,

distinguished panellists,

Claudia and Joachim,

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you all to this symposium. This is a farewell symposium. We at the Deutsche Bundesbank want to say goodbye to you, Claudia and Joachim. We also want to give our sincere thanks for what you have achieved for the Bundesbank. And we want do so publicly now. I say that because we already did this privately when you both left the Bundesbank at the end of last year.

You requested a content-driven event, a symposium on the future of digitalisation and the financial industry, a topic of major importance to both of you in recent years.

2 Digitalisation

The fact that we in Germany need a boost in digitalisation is becoming increasingly widely recognised. The weak growth in Germany raises the question of how to increase productivity. Digitalisation should be one of the answers. More digital skills and more investment in digitalisation could help significantly increase productivity in Germany.

This is demonstrated by looking back at the past. Digital sectors have driven overall productivity growth in Germany considerably – and this despite their considerably small size. In a Monthly Report article published last year, the Bundesbank wrote that this boost to productivity was not produced by digital capital goods alone. Digital intermediate inputs, which feed into numerous goods via production linkages, also played a key role here. We therefore need to look at the entire value chain if we are to exploit digital potential.