Opening Remarks: IADI Digitalisation Roundtable

Opening remarks by Alejandro López, Chair of the Executive Council and President of IADI.

Good morning, IADI Members, distinguished guests, and friends of IADI here in Basel.

A good morning, afternoon or evening also to those joining us virtually today.

Welcome to the IADI Digitalisation Roundtable here at the Bank for International Settlements.

The financial system is often described as a mechanism for allocating capital. More fundamentally, it is the institutional framework that enables economic coordination across time under uncertainty.

In every economy, some agents hold surplus resources while others hold productive opportunities without immediate funding. Absent intermediation, savings would remain idle and investment would be constrained to personal networks. Financial intermediation expands cooperation beyond direct trust relationships and allows large-scale economic activity.

Banks play a central role in this structure by transforming short-term claims into long-term financing. Deposits provide liquidity, credit advances future production into the present, payment systems enable transactions among unknown counterparties, and risk assessment allocates resources across competing uses. The system therefore operates not only as a channel of funds, but as a mechanism that makes future obligations credible.

This structure contains an inherent vulnerability: liabilities are demandable while assets are long-dated. For that reason, financial stability depends not only on solvency but on confidence in the institutional framework supporting financial promises. Central banks, prudential regulation and deposit insurance schemes are not auxiliary elements; they form the credibility architecture that sustains intertemporal coordination.

Now, the financial world is changing fast. Digitalisation is transforming finance.

Technological innovation introduces a distinct policy challenge. It does not merely modify instruments or delivery channels — it alters the location and nature of the financial promise. Much of the current analysis evaluates innovation in terms of efficiency, competition and access. However, stability depends on whether the underlying expectations about liquidity and redeemability remain coherent within the safety net.

New financial arrangements may reduce visible intermediaries without reducing risk. Instead, risk may migrate toward structures where the bearer of the promise becomes ambiguous — institution, platform, protocol or asset. When the public cannot clearly identify the institutional backstop supporting a financial claim, confidence shifts from institutional assurance to individual interpretation, increasing the likelihood of coordination failures.

Modern systemic risk may therefore arise not from weak balance sheets but from functionally equivalent claims operating outside clearly understood stability frameworks. If policy analysis focuses primarily on instruments rather than on expectation formation, prudential oversight may observe compliance while fragility accumulates.

The policy question is not whether innovation should be restricted, but whether it preserves the core function of the financial system: ensuring that financial claims remain credibly redeemable across time.

Without a financial system there is exchange.Without credible institutional backing, financial innovation cannot sustain stability or development.

Here, IADI has a clear role to play. We are the international standard-setter for deposit insurance. Last year we updated the Core Principles of Effective Deposit Insurance Systems. One of the key objectives of this update was to future-proof the standard to make sure it remains relevant in this changing world. Earlier this year we published our consultation report on the impact of financial innovation and digitalisation on deposit insurance systems, which sets the scene for discussions today during the IADI Digitalisation Roundtable.

This Roundtable will discuss questions regarding financial innovation through three lenses. We will fist discuss products such as e-money, stablecoins and tokenised deposits. Then, we will talk about the actors and their behaviour, be them non-bank intermediaries or digital depositors. Thirdly, we’ll have an exchange on technology and examines the opportunities and risks of AI, cloud, and quantum computing.

I encourage you all to participate actively in discussions and share your experience. The discussions today, as well as the ongoing consultation on the IADI Digitalisation Report, will feed into our deliberations regarding future action necessary to shape deposit insurance systems in a dynamic environment.

Deposit insurers must uphold their ability to protect depositors and maintain financial stability in an increasingly digital world. 

Let us use this roundtable as an opportunity to learn from one another, to challenge conventional thinking, and to work towards developing solutions that address the complexities of the digital age. 

I am confident that, together, we can rise to the challenge. Thank you for your expertise, and thank you for being here.

With that, let the discussions begin! 

Thank you.