Central Banking unveiled the winners of its sixth annual FinTech RegTech Global Awards today (June 14), recognising the technological achievements of central banks, supervisors and commercial tech providers. The 11 awards highlight official institutions’ success in cyber resilience, central bank digital currency (CBDC) ecosystem innovation and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in regtech and suptech. Firms were recognised for their use of AI and machine learning to fight money laundering and fraud, and support international regulatory compliance, as well as work building CBDC infrastructure and setting global ethical AI standards.
Central banks and supervisors The Global Impact award went to the Bank of Lithuania for its fintech Newcomer Programme overseen by the newly created Centre for Financial Market Development. The central bank has shown a commitment to responsible sector growth by adding to its supervisory capabilities, as fintech continues to evolve at pace. “We are ready to help companies that create value for consumers,” Lukas Jakubonis, chief business development officer at the Bank of Lithuania, says. “In return, we expect a mature attitude towards business development. It must go together with compliance.” With the Bank of Mongolia’s big data project, the banking sector entered a new data era. The Pioneer award recognises the central bank’s unified data model, which pulls granular data daily from all banks in its jurisdiction. The new data points allow more comprehensive stress-testing, including by geographic region and sector. The project was developed in part with knowledge-sharing with the Bank of Korea. Bank of Mongolia governor Byadran Lkhagvasuren commented on the importance of data innovation and international collaboration: “Building on this achievement, we look forward to continuing to explore the power of big data and its potential to shape the future of central banks and financial systems worldwide.”
The award for CBDC Initiative went to the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) for its work on a CBDC ecosystem. It sees CBDCs as more than just another means of payment. The central bank is working towards a platform that offers smart contract and programmable token features, aimed at encouraging innovation in the financial sector. Vice-governor Papuna Lezhava of the NBG says the central bank identified gaps in financial infrastructure and services, and designed its CBDC to address those areas with contextualised use cases. “NBG’s stakeholder-centric CBDC platform will complement existing payment channels, including the upcoming instant payments system, and provide a safe foundation for private sector innovations in order to meet society’s current and future needs.”
As financial technology continues to rapidly evolve, so too are cyber threats to financial stability evolving. The Central Bank of the Philippines (BSP) won this year’s Cyber Resilience Initiative for ASTERisC*, its cloud-based regtech and suptech solution. ASTERisC* automates the central bank’s cyber security supervision, while streamlining compliance for institutions.
I am proud that ASTERisC* puts the BSP at the forefront of achieving swift, co-ordinated and intelligence-driven cyber security supervision,” says governor Felipe Medalla. “ASTERisC* serves as a monumental precedent for future digital initiatives of the BSP.” Also recognised for its forward-looking regulatory and supervisory technology was the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) new natural language processing (NLP) AI tool, which is helping to address blind spots. Athena will allow over 1,000 supervisors to analyse more than 5 million documents across the Single Supervisory Mechanism. The ECB was this year’s recipient of the Artificial Intelligence award. “It is a great honour to receive the Central Banking award in the field of AI,” Frank Elderson, member of the ECB’s executive board and vice-chair of the ECB’s supervisory board, says. “Combining supervisory technologies with the expertise of our supervisors allows us to be forward-looking and adapt quickly to the continuously changing environment.”
