Central Banking Awards 2026: third group of winners

The Central Bank of Nigeria was named as the Central bank of the year today (March 17), as Central Banking published the third of four tranches of its annual awards. 

Other winners included the Central Bank of Colombia for its new federated retail payments system, Bre-B, and the National Bank of Ethiopia wins the wholesale payment services development award. The Bank of Namibia won the Artificial intelligence initiative award, while the Reserve Bank of India took the Initiative of the year award. CMA Small Systems won the Payments services award, Bloomberg the wholesale financial markets infrastructure services award and the World Bank the Reserve management initiative award. 

Central Banking will publish the final group of award winners on March 19.

Central bank of the year: The Central Bank of Nigeria has successfully reversed years of unorthodox monetary policy, helping to rebuild investor and public confidence in the country’s economy. Since taking office, governor Olayemi Cardoso and his leadership team rejected and reversed recent monetary financing while implementing disciplined monetary tightening and FX-market reform, including the clearance of billions of dollars of outstanding obligations. 

Governance and transparency improvements, the downsizing of unnecessary staff, banking-sector recapitalisation, payments modernisation and Financial Action Task Force ‘grey-list’ removal have all contributed to rebuilding investor and public confidence. 

“The CBN’s leadership team has demonstrated plenty of courage and the CBN showed significant institutional strength to facilitate the rebuilding of unencumbered FX reserves and declining inflation, facilitating measurable progress toward sustainable growth and enhanced financial inclusion,” said Christopher Jeffery, chairman of the Central Banking Awards Committee.

Payments and market infrastructure development – retail: A new federated retail payments system introduce by the Central Bank of Colombia has helped to increase competition and improve financial inclusion in an economy where ‘cash is king’. ‘Bre-B’ – which went fully live in October 2025 – introduced interoperability for multiple separate retail payment platforms. Fast payment transactions now occur 110 times per second in Colombia, more than 2.5 times higher than before Bre-B’s introduction. Around 34 million clients have registered, close to two-thirds of Colombia’s total population, while nearly 519 million transactions have been processed. 

Governor Leondaro Villar says the award “underscores our ongoing efforts to complement our large-value payment infrastructures with a fully interoperable fast-payment system, Bre-B, that facilitates retail election transactions for all Colombians”. He adds that the “dedication of the bank’s team and the strong collaboration across Colombia’s financial industry were essential to achieving this outcome”. 

Payments and market infrastructure development – wholesale: The introduction of a modern, state-of-the-art central securities depository (CSD) and settlement system by the Central Bank of Ethiopia has helped to kick-start the country’s capital markets development.  

In January 2025, the Ethiopian Securities Exchange was launched with its trading platform integrated with the CSD, enabling secondary-market activity. The CSD system now has more than 3,000 active traders, with seven issuers and 41 institutions participating directly. The addition of the Tsega Portal, a retail primary market platform that went live in late 2025 and is undergoing beta testing, will also enable more participation in Ethiopia’s capital markets.

“I sincerely appreciate Central Banking for this prestigious award,” says governor Eyob Tekalign. “It strengthens our resolve to deepen reforms through market infrastructure development, reinforcing market integrity, monetary policy transmission and sustainable growth under our Homegrown Economic Reform Agenda.”

Artificial intelligence initiative:  The Bank of Namibia has adopted an organisation-wide strategy towards artificial intelligence, helping to deliver on the central bank’s core mandate. 

The central bank formalised a strategic roadmap for AI implementation in 2025, prioritising ‘critical use cases’ such as economic nowcasting support and financial stability assessment. It has used machine learning to forecast individual bank non-performing loan ratios up to four quarters in advance, with a forecasting accuracy of 92–98% in back-tests – allowing it to anticipate heightened credit risk before it occurs. The central bank also generated short-term inflation forecasts using ML algorithms combined with existing auto-regressive models, achieving a 90–97% confidence level across all time horizons. 

“We are deeply honoured to be named the winner of Central Banking’s Artificial intelligence initiative,” says governor Ebson Uanguta. “We view this award not as a destination, but as a milestone in our journey to build a data-driven, forward-looking central bank aligned to the demands of the new economy.”

Initiative of the year:  By introducing a mandatory domain name for all regulated banks, the Reserve Bank of India has given lenders a key tool in the battle against cyber crime. 

India experiences some of the highest levels of phishing attacks, which involve luring people to fake websites that are almost identical to official ones. In February 2025, the RBI launched a scheme to ensure regulated banks’ websites ended in ‘.bank.in’, an exclusive and secure domain format, by October the same year. By then, some 98% of India’s commercial banks had successfully done so, enabling customers to quickly verify if a website was legitimate or not. 

“We, at the Reserve Bank of India, are pleased to receive the award for launch of ‘.bank.in’,” says governor, Sanjay Malhotra. “The initiative enhances trust, mitigates phishing and domain spoofing risk, and reduces digital payment frauds, thereby enhancing consumer confidence and strengthening financial stability.”

Payment services:  CMA Small Systems has helped modernise payment systems during the past year for high-value transactions in countries such as Pakistan and in low-value payments in Moldova. 

In Pakistan, CMA has worked closely with the central bank’s Prism+ modernisation project, which involved upgrading the country’s core high-value settlement platform. The new system, which went live in 2025, supports 24/7 availability, full ISO 200222 messaging and improved interoperability with other payment systems. In Moldova, the country’s MIA instant payments scheme – supported by CMA’s software – was extended to person-to-government and business-to-business transfers in 2025. The system is now used by 800,000 citizens – a third of the country’s population. 

“We are honoured to receive the Central Banking Payments services award again,” Maxim Newscheret, regional director for Asia-Pacific and Central Asia at CMA, says. “We remain committed to helping central banks modernise payment infrastructures and accelerate their evolution to address emerging risks while preparing financial systems for the next generation of payments.”

Financial markets infrastructure services – wholesale:  The rollout of an anonymous electronic central order limit book by Bloomberg as well as an enhancement of its auction system has helped central banks to build essential FX infrastructure and allowed treasury departments to optimise debt auctions. 

Sri Lanka and Nigeria are the two most recent markets to adopt Bloomberg’s BMatch for interbank trading in the local spot FX market. The platform allows anonymous orders to be placed and matched with counterparty orders, promoting more efficient market functioning and improved price discovery. Bloomberg’s switch operations, meanwhile, have also helped the Portuguese and Ukrainian treasuries run their debt management more smoothly. They include the simultaneous sale and purchase of government bonds in a single transaction, eliminating the need for separate buy and sell auctions. 

“We’re delighted to be named winner of Central Banking’s financial markets infrastructure award,” says Nicholas Bean, global head of electronic markets at Bloomberg. “This recognition reflects the impact of Bloomberg’s BMatch and BAS solutions in strengthening market transparency, liquidity and resilience across both interbank FX trading and sovereign debt issuance respectively.”

Reserve management initiative:  The World Bank Group, meanwhile, has developed a comprehensive platform that allows reserve managers to capture yield on their uninvested cash portfolios. Officers built the uninvested cash view dashboard using messages that were already available to the institution, enabling clients to monitor their uninvested assets as well as the interest custodians paid on them. The initiative has helped central banks to review and renegotiate the terms of their custodian and central securities depository contracts if needed. 

“At the Treasury, we are entrusted with managing $300 billion in assets on behalf of our members and clients. Through this tool, we leveraged real-time data and analytics to optimise overnight cash balances in our investment portfolios,” says Jorge Familiar, vice-president and treasurer at the World Bank Group. “This not only enables us to maximise returns for our stakeholders but also strengthens our ability to manage risk and deliver lasting impact.”