Over the past few months Russia’s Central Bank has made several steps to track and get involved in the developments of financial technologies.
In February, the bank created a working group to implement fintech innovation in cooperation with market players. Among the fields of investigation of this working group are Blockchain technologies and the way they are, or could be used in financial markets, both in Russia and abroad.
In April, the institution formed a new department dedicated new financial technologies, related projects and processes. This department aims to monitor, analyze and evaluate the implementation of advanced technologies for financial markets, as reported by the Central Bank’s press service.
The Central bank is also interested in the opportunities offered by mobile technologies.
“Considering the rapid development of information technologies, it is essential to envision [their] future. Businesses need to know about the Central Bank’s attitude towards these technologies and the difficulties they may entail,” stated Vadim Kalukhov, who heads the new department.
Thus, concerning the risks related to the use of cryptocurrencies, “no central administrator is in a position to track every transaction,” said Kalukhov. But “such administrator should be able to respond to the potential risks this technology may expose its users to.”
Kalukhov added that the Central Bank is interested in any technology with a potential to reorganize economic and financial processes. Thus, the newly created department will follow closely such fields as cybersecurity, digitization, identification technologies, shared Big Data storage, Internet-of-Things, artificial intelligence, virtualization, cloud technologies, the “uberization” of finance, etc.
“We need to understand how to help market players apply technologies that can make certain operations faster or cheaper, or create new types of business. For instance, remote banking services will allow clients to choose from a bigger number of banks as opposed to three or four ones so far available in certain regions,” says Kalukhov.
Source: Bitcoin Security, Central Bank of Russia.
