The Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH) will be launching an Innovation Network and is focusing on six themes in 2021: suptech and regtech; next-generation financial market infrastructures; central bank digital currencies (CBDCs); open finance; green finance; and cybersecurity. The Innovation Network will be comprised of experts drawn from the BIS’s 63 member central banks.
Among the newly launched projects will be:
- a proof of concept solution for a regulatory reporting platform employing data analytics and data visualization to provide supervisors with deeper and more timely insights to address risks;
- a proof of concept platform using multiple wholesale CBDCs to explore the feasibility of faster and cheaper cross-border payments;
- a technological research project and associated prototype(s) for tiered retail CBDC distribution architectures; and
a distributed ledger technology prototype for distribution of tokenized green bonds to retail investors.
The initiatives will be driven by the first three hubs in Hong Kong, Singapore and Switzerland, which have been established in conjunction with their partner central banks: the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Swiss National Bank. Other initiatives will be undertaken by the planned new Hub Centres across Europe and North America when they begin operations in the coming months, as well as a Strategic Partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
During its first full year of operation, the BISIH advanced work on key projects related to its thematic priorities. These included:
- The G20 TechSprint, which enabled central banks and financial regulators to collaborate with fintech firms on technology solutions to resolve operational problems in regulatory compliance and supervision.
- The Foundational Digital Infrastructure (FDI) project, which will develop a blueprint for a next-generation cross-border payments network that involves the interconnection of existing rails across jurisdictions.
- Project Helvetia, a collaborative experiment showing the feasibility of integrating tokenized assets and central bank money.
- The TechChallenge, which showcased the potential for new technologies to resolve problems in trade finance.
Project Rio, a prototype market surveillance platform making use of artificial intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology.