A main focus of my research, since 2000 and so long before “fintech” became trendy, has been on financial operations and financial technologies in banking, capital markets, asset management and insurance. I am both enthusiastic and skeptical. I am enthusiastic about how the ongoing digitization of finance can improve services and reduce costs for customers, ultimately supporting better economic outcomes in both lower income and advanced countries; I am skeptical about most fintech startups and about the ridiculous hype surrounding many of the proposed technologies (don’t get me started on ‘blockchain’, the perception of this as a transformative technology is ridiculous).
One of my main areas of current research is the impact of new digital technologies on monetary arrangements. Here is my response to the current (June 2020) BoE consultation on issue of central bank digital currency (CBDC). This suggests that central banks should provide only the minimum core functionality for others to offer transaction services in central bank e-money, not on “issuing” CBDC (i.e. providing a CBDC service themselves). This also contains a summary of some recent relevant working papers of mine with a number of co-authors.