ECB’s Nagel: Central Banking to Change in Increasingly Digital World

6 May 2024

By Isabel Teles – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel on Monday said that central banking would need to adapt to the demands of a society and economy as these become more and more digital.

In a panel discussion at the BIS Innovation Summit 2024, Nagel, who heads the German Bundesbank, said, ‘I guess in 10 years the mandate of central banking will be the same: safeguarding price stability. But how to get there? All the instruments we are using, the services we are providing, they will be -- it’s my forecast -- completely different from today.’

The Eurosystem had to push the digital transformation immediately and reflect on the continuity of its business model, he said. ‘I think we lost some time already and now I believe we have to speed up.’

‘If you would have asked me 20 years ago: "Is the central bank business model destroyable? Yes or no?", I would have said clearly, "No." Now, I’m not so sure anymore. We have to work on our business model’, he said.