The Board of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced the expansion of the BIS Innovation Hub with the establishment of new Hub centres across Europe and in North America in cooperation with member central banks.
In the next two years, the BIS will open centres in collaboration with the Bank of Canada (Toronto), the Bank of England (London), the European Central Bank/Eurosystem (Frankfurt and Paris) and four Nordic central banks (Danmarks Nationalbank, the Central Bank of Iceland, the Central Bank of Norway and Sveriges Riksbank) in Stockholm. The BIS will also form a strategic partnership with the Federal Reserve System (New York).
“The BIS Innovation Hub is an investment in the future of central banking and the financial system. These new centres will expand our reach significantly and help create a global force for fintech innovation,” said Agustín Carstens, BIS’ general manager, in a statement.
The expansion will build on the foundation already put in place by the first three Hub Centres – in Hong Kong SAR with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Singapore with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Switzerland with the Swiss National Bank.
“With this expansion, the Innovation Hub will be well placed to advance work on a broad range of issues of importance to the central banking community, including digital currency and digital payments, cybersecurity, distributed ledger technology and artificial intelligence,” said head of the BIS Innovation hub, Benoît Cœuré, in a statement.