Central Banks are increasingly playing an important role in financial inclusion. As technology continues to change the financial sector, however, there may be new ways in which these institutions undertake this work. Michael Barr, Dean of the Ford School, and Adrienne Harris, Senior Fellow, Ford School Professor of Practice and former Special Assistant to President Obama, with support and funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are leading a project to help develop the central bank of the future and its role in fostering financial inclusion around the world.

This project will consider how the role of a central bank could evolve in the future to enable it to make greater contributions toward financial inclusion. The project will consider monetary policy, financial sector supervision, and payments systems, as well as other functions. The project also is meant to identify technologies, processes, or tools that could benefit a central bank in supporting public policy objectives related to inclusion, and consider how other sectors, including the private sector and philanthropy, might have a role to play in supporting the development of those tools.

A key output of this project will be a policy paper outlining potential future designs for a central bank and potential pathways for reaching that future state. Over the period of this two-year grant we have been engaging with standards-setting bodies, central banks, financial regulators and policymakers, as well as futurists and technologists, incumbent financial institutions, fintechs and other financial ecosystem stakeholders.

To that end, please join us for our Central Bank of the Future conference on October 2nd and 3rd, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Topics will include, among other areas, technology and financial inclusion, digital currency (fiat and non-fiat), AML and financial inclusion. Speakers and attendees will include individuals from  standards-setting bodies, central banks and other financial regulators, and policymakers, as well as futurists and technologists, and other financial ecosystem stakeholders.

Registration to the event is free.

For more information visit http://financelawpolicy.umich.edu/central-bank-future-conference

We gratefully acknowledge the support of The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, a co-sponsor for this event.