FinTech & RegTech Global Awards ceremony honours innovators

Central bankers from around the world gathered in Mexico City on November 13 to celebrate technological excellence in the industry.

“There is considerable work going on now surrounding the boundaries and interactions of central bank and private money,” Central Banking’s editor-in-chief Chris Jeffery said while opening the ceremony. Leaders were being confronted by “issues related to governance, privacy, scalability and technological interoperability”.

Jeffery said that artificial intelligence (AI), “its machine learning algorithms drawing on vast cloud-based data”, offered “tremendous opportunities” in regulatory and supervisory technology and in informing monetary policy. Many of this year’s awards recognised achievements in this area. However, he also highlighted the “delicate balance” central banks must maintain between the promise of AI and new cyber security and operational resilience risks.

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) was recognised in the Global Impact category for its live wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) and monetary policy operations on distributed-ledger technology, a world-first for a central bank. Accepting the award were Philip Mueller, the SNB’s head of corporate actions and collateral management, and Rebecca Gerosa, a money market specialist at the bank.

Mueller said the tokenisation project “would not have been possible” without the SDX digital exchange and participating banks, thus showcasing the importance of public and private partnership.

Marsorry Ickua, director of information technology at the Bank of Namibia, collected the Pioneer Award on the central bank’s behalf for its data automation centre of excellence. “This recognition reflects our unwavering commitment to digital transformation, not only to enhance productivity and efficiency within our institution, but also to drive modernisation and transformation of the Namibian financial landscape,” he said.

The Bank of Portugal won the Artificial Intelligence award. Philippa Lima, its deputy director of information systems and technology, accepted the trophy. “Receiving this award is an incentive to continue to push forward the boundaries of AI at the service of the central bank,” she said. The Bank of Portugal’s Alya solution, as well as enhancing supervisory efficiency, was compliant with data protection laws – a key concern around AI for other central banks. The bank has also collaborated with the Deutsche Bundesbank on an AI-powered text analysis tool.

ACI Worldwide won the Global Technology Partner award for its work powering 26 domestic and pan-regional real-time payments schemes. “We are honoured and thankful for the trust of our partners and clients around the world,” Alessandro Silva, ACI’s chief revenue officer, told the audience.

The Central Bank of Hungary was this year’s CBDC Initiative winner for its innovative retail CBDC pilot. One of the project’s many unique elements was that the central bank covers the whole value chain for the issuance and redemption of the CBDC, including know-your-customer and anti-money laundering processes. “Thank you, Central Banking, for the recognition,” said Ádám Nyikes, head of fintech and digitalisation. “I like to think that through our pilot project, with sharing our experience and lessons learned, we were able to contribute to the global central banking community.”

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) picked up the Sustainability Initiative award for its Project Gaia. Alexandre Tombini, its chief representative for the Americas, said: “It is a pleasure to be here receiving this award on behalf of my colleagues at the BIS Innovation Hub.” He went on to single out Cecilia Skingsley, the hub’s global director, and Raphael Auer, the head of its European wing in Paris and Frankfurt. Tombini said the BIS’s Project Gaia aimed to make the collection of environmental, social and governance (ESG) data more systematic through the use of AI, “and specifically large language models, to read through a large volume of PDF reports”. Central Banking judges also recognised the contribution of the BIS’s partners on the project: the Bank of Spain, the Deutsche Bundesbank and the European Central Bank.

Joseph Potvin, executive director and lead systems architect at the Xalgorithms Foundation, collected the Finnovator award for its framework to simplify the management of complex rule-based systems. Joining him on stage was data science research adviser Nhamo Mtetwa. “Thank you very much to Central Banking for letting us be the first free, open-source, not-for-profit organisation to win this award,” Potvin said.

Seth Oliphant, senior sales executive at FIS, accepted the award for Technology Partner for Regulatory Compliance on behalf of the firm. FIS provides more than 50 central banks with data warehousing and enhanced supervisory analytics. “This is a tremendous privilege, a tremendous honour,” he said.

During the evening celebrating the achievements of central banks and their commercial partners, Jeffery reminded the audience that much work remained to be done. “More than one billion adults remain unbanked,” he said. Despite much research, international payment networks remained fragmented and costly, and hackers every day were finding new ways to break down defences. “We need to share best practice and collaborate to tackle these issues,” he said. “We hope that the awards, in some small way, help that process.”

A list of all the winners, and the jury’s reasons for selecting them, can be found here. In-depth articles about the winners’ projects can be found here.