The central bank for central bankers named a former Swiss policymaker to run a new innovation hub to open by mid-year.
The Bank for International Settlements is naming Raphael Auer (pictured below) as the new head of its Eurosystem center, it said in a statement on Thursday. It forms part of a wider innovation push championed by four European central banks, including Switzerland's.
Auer, who is Swiss as well as Austrian, is already with BIS as a principal economist focusing on innovation and the digital economy. He was previously with the Swiss National Bank as well as an associated research professor with KOF, a think-tank at Zurich's ETH University.
Experimenting With CBDC
The Swiss and French central banks and the BIS last month wrapped an experiment, dubbed Project Jura, in cross-border settlement of digital currencies, or CBDCs. The push, with an Accenture-led consortium, also involved SIX's digital exchange, Credit Suisse, and UBS.
The hub overseen by Auer will form a key part of the wider innovation hub's project portfolio by connecting the BIS to the euro area's ecosystem, BIS innovation hub Benoît Cœuré said. With locations in Frankfurt and Paris, the Eurosystem center is due to open by mid-2022
