We're going to try to nourish both your mind on your body over this lunch so we are going to have a panel during lunch please feel free to continue to eat I just ask you save some dessert for the rest of us here in the diocese if you don't mind. So my name is Chris and I'm from the film one of the Gates Foundation and so pleased to welcome you to this luncheon to talk about central banks and innovation and I'm very happy that we have 2 experts on the subject here to join me today for this is a question on the diocese allow me to introduce 1st deputy governor. For the financial stability section at the Central Bank of Nigeria sitting to my immediate left the deputy governor is a member of the Monetary Policy Committee as well as a committee of governors at the central bank there and her primary responsibility is for financial policy as well as the regulation of the banking and the payment systems She chairs the National payments which as well as the financial inclusion technical technical committee and if you were here yesterday for Mary Ellen Iskenderian keynote speech you saw the governor in a video in a prior life in the private sector when she was an executive director at Diamond Bank one of Nigeria's largest banks and one of the banks that worked with world women's world banking on the beta savings Project Savings products and the deputy governor has over 20 years of private sector experience in financial services so welcome to go over to Ann Arbor. Sitting to my left to your right is Leonardo Korto who is the head of innovation and the Digital Economy unit at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel Switzerland if you're not familiar with the b I o s The b.r.s. is a bit like a central bank for central banks in a way. He is an economist by training and Leonardo serves as the head of monetary policy served as head of monetary policy at the b i e s.. As well as the head of money and credit union credit unit and the head of the banking sector unit in the research section at the Bank of Italy in Rome and his primary research interests include monetary transmission mechanisms effectiveness of macro prudential policies on systemic risk and the effects of technological innovation on financial to mediation which is Maynard focused currently in his in his new role at the B.A.'s and I'm Chris Columbia from the ability of the Gates Foundation as I mentioned and at the Gates Foundation we believe that every person deserves the chance to lead a healthy and productive life and so you're probably very familiar with the Gates Foundation's work in health medicines vaccinations and education and so on but we also focus on financial inclusion because a good body of research suggests that when people who are unbanked or poor marginalized groups and women when they have access to accounts and especially digital financial services accounts they are better able to lift themselves out of poverty by improving their ability to see to borrow and to make payments and to invest in their futures and so that's why we care about things occlusion they're very happy to partner with the universe to Michigan on this important project I'm also recovering regulator and central bank or myself I have to say I worked for 25 years for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the supervision section there and also spent 2 years at the b. us as well working for the standard setting body for bank supervisors called the Basel Committee on banking supervision and so I should stress that any comments or opinions that I'm a shared today are my own and do not in a survey reflect those of the Gates Foundation or frankly anyone else who matters. So I'd really like to thank Michael Barr Harris Christy Baer Kelly Brown Tracy around duzen Ashton. Ashton Smith as well as the large number of Ari's and staff here at the university Sam Jesse Sean j. Jennifer Lucas Cole and Nick for putting us a wonderful conference I hope you might join me in a round of applause for them to thank them for all their hard work thank you thank you thank you. So we're going to talk today about innovation and particularly the role that central banks have in responding to their innovation in the marketplace and Leonardo at the B.A.'s you and your colleagues are have been monitoring and reporting on the emergence of some disruptive technologies in the marketplace and some new service providers in the financial services spaces as one of you tell us a little bit about how these new players have expanded into the provision of financial services financial services and I know that you have some slides you like to share with us on this question you're so here 1st of all thank you Chris thanks to all due we're going as a for a very me to the panel is a great blip pleasure going on or. Your prepared some slides into the news the topic of big tech or in finance and the slides. But based on some of the searches that we have conducted the be a yes and they are summarized that in a chapter of our. Economic Report obviously the usual disclaimer applies saw. We know that technology firms are we have in mind Barbara Ahmed's on Google Facebook that and the one that are on the left side of our on these of these slides are. Growing rapidly in the last decade and they have started to do some inroads into into finance so. These are these firms are a very big this is the name big tech and indeed the level of a market capitalization that these are year then those of the g. seeds. The one that do the biggest financially situation in the world. So why technology firms are venturing into finance and they basically they ever will call d.n.a. So is it that our network exceptionally nice and the d.v.d. set that is a sort of a feedback loop or that allow them to have a lot of synergies you can think about it be meant for having a lot of data creating network except now if he's developing in the platform Newark D.V.D.'s and these activities that would bring you data so it's sort of enforcing the law indeed the the 1st fact that they want to mention to you is that big ticket ever a portion of their revenue. From financial services but at the moment that these are. The you can see in on the left side of these a slide. Is more. It is something like an 1111 percent of the total revenues while there are good businesses steel or even information technology and consulting the cloud computing that only there to represent around 46 percent of the of thought the revenues we know that Big Tex the server globally but when we look at. The big tech subsidies that these on the right side of the slide that we can see that the British are not a mini look at the new North America and the Pacific but. They have moved to quite extensively in in China as a win or with Dan cent and financial. But still they're developing Goatse responding and obviously in emerging market economies are a nod to. The Southeast Asia East Africa and Latin America. So the 2nd fact is that. The development of of a big financial service is. Full of a very precise barter saw for example Pieman services where the 1st financial services that big of and the example of where we mind. Only. Be the group. And people for 40 b. and the. Financial services that are fully integrated into the e-commerce platform the development of. Services. Is value in a discount we said that less and I should develop a credit card payment them and indeed they benefit from the fact that they know in a lot of counties that I fed action of the population that use mobile phone so the school did explain for example why China an outstanding level of. Big **** De Mint over g.d.p. to 16 percent with respect to very law level in United States in the ability in the nation and United Kingdom for the communication of these 2 factors. So as a sort of. Prosecution of this story so after theme and so we speak to accept or to offer. A particular issue and also other products and these are fairly well management products and such as a money market funds so in the slides I just represent. One the composition of one a very important money market fund because it's the biggest in the world you borrow from. That is offered by the big group book and I want to shore some interesting facts on the. Left hand side you can see that the composition of the asset that you borrow to Mimi in bank deposits or 60 percent of the assets that you are in bank deposit and in terms of the maturity of us. On the right inside you can see that. Around out of there are certain limited your less the dirty days so does he mean these 1st of all or is that the relationship between the big tech and banks that is quite That is quite complex or and then these all sort of flex or saw potential financial stability concern because imagine everyone on the money market fund that is composed of the positive short term these are obviously we likely in some of the if you will the source of our bank fun so the last fact that we want to shoot the to show you is that the credit. Easy is also offered by. These large technology the technology firm so. It eases these more with respect to do to other forms of financing if you think about the new feet the credit. In a 2017 These are represented 0.5 percent of the total all standing in the war and even in China China is the vanguard of the for the offering of these a product is only 3 percent. Some studies conducted that it showed that nobody could relation between a level of financial development of a county and a level of credit you can see these are from the left hand side part of these good are for where you have on there we don't align the fraction of a number of the number of branches of the population and on the galaxy's you have a duration little bit of that issue between beat the credit into the credit but also that is one of final consideration want to do that. Yes a big There clearly is more lower but is very different is very different from bank loans and then you can see these from these. Right inside the where we do some colleagues in China in one going and through using and financial data we have to understand the decorrelation of credit with respect to us at price and we have seen that the way. Traditional bank launce are. Correlated with just a price in the as you said the base you saw in the mother what we have been differential accelerator mechanism big ticket is not that is not correlated is market related with the business cycle so this change completely the money that there is a mission mechanism and the way central bank should factored in the development of the credit. In these final days just to report some. Additional studies that have been conducted and b.s. if you want to talk to develop further some of these points so there are there's a fascinating overview and I commend the paper to the audience is reading later it is a great paper looking at big tech in these very large firms getting into financial services can you tell us a little bit about maybe some of the benefits that they might bring as well as some of the drawbacks you mentioned the monetary policy challenge being maybe one of the drawbacks but are there additional things that we should think about as regulators and supervisors. It's a very it's very interesting question that I was there to develop just making one example that is the one of. The market for credit So 1st of all are. The benefit and the cost of that can finance that I brought from the uni so these are net pork activity feedback loop creates a lot of potential and benefit in terms of financial inclusion but also a lot of risk so let me start the we the potential in I mean there's a good example of the credit market so. In terms of the provision of credit. There are benefits coming from this screening activity and a large amount of the provision of credit are to financially excluded saw that is already leisure to showing that. The use of. Machine learning and big data for credit scoring allows the big tech or to serve the creditor to a lot of segment of the population that are financially screwed and this is clear with the experience of and econometric analysis that we have conducted for China and and and and Argentina with medically but. Other potential benefit. From the fact that there is no need for collateral so what we see is that in a way that are substitutes collateral and this is also. Producing a positive effect in terms of financial inclusion but as I mentioned there are. Some potential costs that that did I have a from from the data from the use of the data and these are basically 2 1st the easy. Potential. Effects are derived from the market power and the 2nd one is about to the misuse of the us or market power it is clear so big they can became dominant and basically they can call so we did a position but isn't that what is to entry or they can simply exclude the other firms from the provision of their services in their platform that they can just simply offer their own their own products. And images of did that there are there are all sorts some studies that show that it could be that. As big tech a very very smart in presence communication in the event extraction these could be not been a future for the consumer and that is in terms of how to relocate the consumer surplus and also a potential. Negative effect could be derived from the fact that if they are good in that they use a particularly. Smart the and the in the directing the risk some part of the population that that are risky that this should be for example ensure that they could be excluded or thoughts of some form of discrimination terms of minority think about and that is a people to show that the black and Hispanic King in the u.s. could be. So it would have less potential benefit but they will do so again in terms of public bodies See I think of that the code you. Bring a. Lot of potential benefit them but these arrests have to be. It wouldn't I'm solvable sort of because. It's a public choice and it's a choice all books aside these societies could have different preferences sorts of event depending on the leaf and the level of financial development Yes Well having read your paper and heard your remarks to date if you'll see me like this is maybe just the beginning of the chapter of big checks and finance that as you said their credit expenses are rather low but that said Facebook has 2700000000 customers G.-Mail has 1500000000 users I mean these are larger than most countries and so they haven't a tremendous base to expand to if they choose to do that and so we'll need to think carefully about those subjects so thank you very much for that overview Leonardo Debbie governor Mudd could you share some of the perspectives perhaps as a central banker and supervise your working in a dynamic and vibrant market like Nigeria which is a very young population very quickly. What types of person services providers are you seeing that are disruptive and how do you think about those as a central banker and supervisor Ok thank you k o hear Me Ok so I think we're seen disruption across the value chain of financial services in one year I know that when people talk about tech data innovation digital innovation People tend to look at that as disrupting what the traditional banks are doing but interestingly 9 Jiri and I'll use 90 a lot because that distinction I come from we find that we see this happening even within traditional banking services where banks are deploying a I based solution for convenience of customers they're using it for their credit scoring they're using childbirths increase in the it's sort of in terms of driving product development product design within the banking sector and then some of these technologies as well the fin techs are partnering with the banks and are providing these as value added services for the banking system because I think it's really important to see to it that there is well to say that this is rotten is not just expanding the number of players is also changing what we see within the banking sector we think that as regulators we are always looking at how we can bring the cost of financial services down to reduce the cost and we see technology innovation new channels of delivery we do see in cash on the cost of cash as a huge opportunity that we can leverage Having said that we're seeing disruption in savings for example new savings apps that is helping to bring. Beyond typical savings government savings people I want to invest in government treasury. Yes can now do it Vadra mobile phone in the past this used to be reserved for the high net worth individuals that have access to large private banks we're seeing happily disruption in the micro lending area where you have some companies providing micro loans to often people that ordinarily would not qualify for a loan within a sort of typical bank but I think one of the huge the biggest disruptions to seen is in the payment system itself. And maybe merchants to collect you know payment for goods and services you talked about Nigeria about 200000000 people. Use So 60 percent of that is people under the age of $35.00 a lot of creativity in there a lot of the informal side is pretty basic but it's also increasingly bringing up these new entropy nurses that Ali program your typical open a store it's like I have an idea I go on to Instagram I sell I collect somebody needs to give me a solution for that and Instagram is out across borders you know it's Nigeria it's Egypt it's the u.k. I have to deliver I have to collect payment you come to talk about the arrangements around regional payments and international payments so we see from tax entry into much and acquiring space a lot we see them providing solutions that I've spoken to and of course the opportunity so in terms of how we see it as regulators are said one part of it we like it because if he brings down the cost of providing services all well and good the data helps us to make better decisions even for the banks you know when we talked about financial health Citi and if you want central banks to to to measure we're going to need that data of course the opportunities where financial inclusion sort of concerned the results speak for themselves today in Nigeria 63 percent. Is our financial inclusion number and a lot of that has happened in the last 7 years we've seen astronomical as trauma nomic or increases in. Isn't payments pos use reduction in check use you know transactions digital government digitize in their collection and then we see all of that So those are the good benefits and of course it's also a huge opportunity for a regulator to expand their sort of coverage in terms of the types of organizations you supervise sometimes you also talk about that as a problem with actually an opportunity to be able to see more come out of the shadow banking space where you had no visibility to see these new companies emerge the risks apart from the cyber is risk that I think is par for course when it comes to technology so let's pack that for a regulator you are thinking about the fragmentation of the number of you know organization. They have some of them are banks some of them are not banks on the magic companies they were there any a conversation about what regulators should be doing to collaborate to the telco regulator because lab rating for instance with the banking regulator so there's that fragmentation you have to consider borders you know if you're serving Nigerian customers or you know registered in Manchuria How do I sort of and sure that consumers are protected their data is protected so new questions about cross border collaboration so in that respect proper finale t. over a glacial under regulation if you talk to a typical bank they would tell you that the fin techs are not regulated properly they feel over regulated and they think you're giving these guys a free pass should you use the same risk based regulatory supervisory framework for these companies or should you come up with something different so for are these are questions that we need to answer as the market evolves I love the earlier conversation about control over says innovation and those trade offs and I think there's no simple answer we will keep having to make those trade offs as it works for the jurisdiction what I would favor is a nuanced approach and inclusive approach and I think that the fact that many central banks in emerging markets are doing Sun boxes should give us comfort that they're willing to give these companies sort of a playing ground where we can just observe in an environment of trust because they also have to believe that if they come out so to speak you wouldn't be using the knowledge you have of the operations to. Should I say. Make it difficult for them to innovate I think one of the things I didn't mention is that usually when it comes to innovation the companies are young the a creative and operational risk is not exactly what's on the mind when they start or other money wondering whether again. That is what you expect of balun banks of frankly come a long way you know they probably didn't start this with years and years sort of of that so from regulators perspective we welcome this for all of the good things they can do for us in financial inclusion reducing the cost improving access all the problems around Id you know all those barriers or address verification if technology can do this for us yes but then we need to then balance with all of these other concerts. Yes that's what that will thanks for that wonderful overview of the various trends taking place in Nigeria but you're also reflecting on some trends that although you mentioned they are these are largely your experience there isn't as in other countries as well and in particular I wanted to call one point you mention and that is that the cost savings that technology is driving saving money on these transactions is not just an efficiency thing it actually is a powerful driver for inclusion because if you look at the legacy banking model you bricks and mortar branches and agencies and so on it's very expensive to build a brick and mortar banking network but we've found and some of the research we sponsored has found that when you move to digital financial services you can cut costs by 90 percent and that means suddenly you can serve a much larger population than you could hear before it's much more profitable to serve people who live in rural areas in remote areas where you would never go and try to branch but I wanted to pick up on your point about innovation in the new kinds of companies coming into the space and also the impact that they're having on the legacy companies so Nigeria has a very interesting new banking license that's been introduced and I wanted to tell us a little bit about the payment service bank and what drove that decision yes well it's not new I have to say because there's a lot of excitement because I think with we're waiting for Nigeria to make a it's so decide how it's going to go where sort of this big idea about bringing new players in on what it does for you know expanding inclusion so the payments that his bank is our way of bringing in more participants everybody focuses on the telcos because it allows the telcos in but it's actually beyond the telcos it's looking at anyone that has a channel that can be leveraged to create more access so it's a super market it's the retail of the big retailers it's the mobile many companies which in one Juhi usually have spent the last since we license them about 10 years ago building these agent necklaces with anyone that has a network that can be leveraged to get more people access when we're talking about cost want I forgot to mention was that increasingly we see banks. Expanding their a.t.m. sort of structure what they're doing is expanding pos using Agent because as cheaper and technology is nimble it's easier to sort of maneuver and deliver the service. So the thinking behind the p.s.p. even though you have about 63 percent inclusion our target is 80 percent by next year you still have a huge because of the huge population you still have huge opportunities in the excluded and all we're trying to do is to get more people access now with the license and also serve institutions we have micro finance banks for instance where we have switching companies we have payment terminal solution providers we have all of these so the regulations that have enabled new players come in well one thing we have found is that the pattern of provision still usually revolves around the open areas it is really concentrated in certain areas so one of the problems we're trying to solve with the p.s.p. license because if you look at the with the guidelines have been put it's supposed to be technology driven it's supposed to bring in more participants it's supposed to be focused on 50 percent of say they're going to build any physical structures we want that 50 percent of that should be in rural areas on the banks areas under-served areas so it is specifically focusing on this exclusion problem in terms of access and track and to monitor how well we're doing we're just completing our financial access maps that it's going to be an interactive map that will show you know broadly speaking what the opportunities are in terms of financial access where we have our banks where we have A.T.M.'s where we have agents where we have ph beads where we have and you know another thing about the p.s.p. that I think is critical for us to know is that the telcos come with this establishments network that they've been using to deploy value added services now these are potential points we can use to expand our id system for instance when we have the id system we came up with Bangor official number a few years ago we have 40000000 Nigerians on that and we're looking to expand that across the population now imagine if you had 200300000 more points where people can. Go and so the register and all that it totally opens up the opportunities for those that are excluded. We looked at the India model payment bank model where most of the things we liked about that was the fact that you know the payment banks and media are focused only on deposit mobilisation at least for now I think they have a 25 percent sort of focus on the rural areas we have 50. Some of the admission or things we put in apart from increasing the sort of minimums we want in terms of rural areas is that we thought it was also important what you were talking about Leonardo about market power and the the fact that if you have. If a payment service bank has. A parent that controls some services across the chain you want to ensure that it is providing the same level of service across the entire participants in the market the last thing you want is for some participants to get sort of better pricing or better service and you know so I and the guidelines sort of try to sort of address a love a love that is the only days we've just given approvals in principle but we're very excited about the potential given what we already know about the the channels you know that these organisations bring and the variety that these organisations Yes Well thank you very very detailed view into Nigeria was going on there we're not approaching it up as look at the global perspective and think a little bit about the public policy challenges that we're facing now as regulators and powers to be honest thinking about some of these issues or Goble of all. Well. We we consider them. We consider for Financial in financial innovation at. The center of our term strategy so indeed that is b.s. 2025 innovations so they do that really reflects a so a commitment of of the b a s a to breeze continue seeing the vision to prepare the b.s. itself or for the change of more sort we we we're doing do seem to him to France one he said to be in Aberdeen what we provide for a central bank community and an example is to support the central banks that are doing. Very well. In the case of the Central Bank of Nigeria the other easier to innovate ourself in terms of how we operate as an institution saw and so we see. Into internally as a change indeed the one element of our strategies that the creation of the b.s. innovation our book and these. 3 main goal to the 1st one is to eat into fi and develop a. Critical transit in the financial technology that of relevance of the central banks are the 2nd goal easier to develop public goods or in particular just be so. That are geared towards. Improving over the financial difference the system. And the global globally to produce efficiency and then to serve as a focal point for a network or Central Bank expert on the Malaysian so as. The as we know the revolution. Knows no borders we look at it in different parts of the globe you could be in multiple locations on Kong or Singapore and Barsel its unique. And other initiatives to force policy and to do research that could try to. Answer some of these are relevant policy question and. And indeed the ignition of the unit I'm leading the innovation digital economy unit responded to these 2 Disney there and we have a number of projects that are currently in development in areas such as well one needs a big tech in finance and the impact in terms of competition the 2nd one is. Talking edition of our sets Center event digital currency global c will call on how these will impact in the future the mother he sent to Daria easy money in general our financial innovation could impact on the market economy and the conduct of monetary policy and that the last one. Point that it was also mentioned this morning many times into the panel. That all of the. Soup techer and Gov Teka And what do you all are one example is out of the. Firms that take part to ascend boxer if he is impacting their exposed performance these are just a natural a few elements of our 3rd a-g. for the medium term. To analyze. Financial innovation and technology could impact on the work of central banks so there's really exciting and fascinating to see that the B.A.'s which I think it is was very conservative organization is actually pushing forward with ideas about innovation and trying to rethink things and when I heard Governor Mr Parsons the manager and b.s. talk about these things in the past and so Steve things you mention mentioned Lee this off probably goods which the b.s. is long done in terms of center setting and so on but just like that hard public goods and do you have an idea what he means by that is you talk about actually software and that's of the not the infrastructure of are actually those example that Asia was measuring So we need that to not to forget to the fact that center banks create a trust us independent system and the public infrastructure is very important this morning that will source for discussion in the panel about the experience of India with the digital age the and the payment the infrastructure of the created so in a way the goal of central banks use it to reinforce. These aspects in order to create a very solid environment for the financial system in the future yes thank you so government is one if you could respond to that do central banks have are all to play in promoting innovation themselves the short answer is yes. The long answer is where does it stop where does it start with a stop you know so the legal framework Lisa be in there the regulation and the policy they should do that they should provide some of the utilities that my view I know there is sort of 2 camps in that respect because we've heard this morning about what are some of the potential pitfalls if they provide utilities and sort of the power to sort of take them away. There should be at the forefront of innovation because of all the reasons I've mentioned all the benefits we've talked about the fact that inclusion is quite high into the mandate so if it's going to help you achieve the money down even if it wasn't in inside the Mandy The truth is that it does help you Foster of the financial and the monetary and the price stability that you need so we will definitely as regulators need to be sort of very interested at that the jury's out as to at what point. We allow the market. To self regulate I don't know if that time would ever come where the market can sort of by itself just go eant you know do this Luckily we're having this conversation and when I meet other central bankers you know I'm happy to know that we're not the only ones grappling with what these choices so there should mean. A lot of the emerging market economies that leapfrog some and developed ones in terms of embracing technology because of the real issues that need to be to be resolved and them I think they will these economies will be the test case for how well this sort of is going to work that's why it's what were for us to provide infrastructure for instance set up a central street set up a central deposition tree you know make it fit for purpose for everyone to sort of plug in you know they could become officials about a single source of failure you're right so when that comes up you you come up with or the other solutions I heard from one of the colleagues yesterday about what deity can do to to resolve this region like better technology can do to resolve this single point of failure sort of issue so as we sort of walk down this road I think that we as regulators will always keep our eye on on the pitfalls and the risks and find ways to sort of. On combat then if you look at major experience all of the regulations that we've come up with is what has enabled these companies to thrive let's not forget without the licensing without the rules without the guidelines they won't be even there for us to see us today so you can take today you can take the central banks out of the conversation about innovation Yes I think what needs to happen is that at what point do we get to where we see Ok it's time to hand over his marker what a wonderful way to sum up for conversation both in the session as well as for the most of the conference and I think your time perhaps or one question one question what is a very short question yes so if you raise your hand you must promise you can ask this question in one sentence no run on sentences. Well the monitors mission mechanism where we will be definitely affected by. These changes in the in the last lied and if you refer to the last slide of the slide on the money market funds but in both cases there is an effect on the money that is mission Meg and it's because a in one case the keys are. Correlation with respect to their surprise. We have in mind in the traditional microeconomic model definition accelerator So this means that when for example there is a monetary tightening there is an effect on on house prices. With. The u.s. mission in keys of big credit or. Is a fact that are. Not employees simply because they don't rely on collateral so these means that the credit will be moderate correlated we. Traditional business cycle so this could be an implication for a little submission mechanism and a 2nd aspect related to the slide on the money market fund there we can see that there is a complex relationship but that that's to be fully understood because a. There is a sort of a connection between the big tech and the bank in terms of there are certainly abilities so these. Will be an Eliza deeply also in relational we did a different. Kind of 36 for example. People but Bank of China was a was aware of these effects on the floor of the. That was. You know we. **** up the Net by the creation of 100 percent of a server that now a big company south. Of to deposit with with the Central Bank So this is just an example to show you that the central banks. Are Where are starting to get to be to. The effect of technology that a sponsor is not that naive as to be really well crafted and it really depends on the situation I learned that in 6 So let me get encourage you to read Leonardo's paper on this subject of the big tech in finance so with that let me just sum this up very quickly by saying that with today at the session we have learned that and we know that innovation can help us to serve the poor and a broader section of the population better innovation can change the players in the marketplace including the legacy players and central bankers can drive them an innovation here we have to actually examples of central bankers who are driving innovation in both at the global level and at the national level so please join me in thanking both Leonardo and deputy governor mother joining us.