Bundesbank celebrates five years of InnoWerk

Stability needs innovation, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said at an event marking the five-year anniversary of the Bundesbank’s innovation lab, InnoWerk, in Frankfurt. To celebrate, InnoWerk invited experts on innovation from within the financial sector to network and discuss developments. 

Nagel: Linking innovation with values

In a panel discussion, the Bundesbank President stressed that he would like to see innovation and technology linked to our values. As a central bank, the Bundesbank is not trying to push innovation forward at all costs, he said. What it aims to do, he continued, is focus on things that fall within its statutory mandate. One example is the digital euro.

Dialogue on innovation in central banking

At the event, guests had the opportunity to discuss various innovations. These included the digital euro, quantum technology and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) at central banks. 

Space for innovation and knowledge transfer

InnoWerk is a venue for the Bundesbank’s agile projects, where staff members with various specialist backgrounds work together to develop new ideas and test innovative models of collaboration. For example, they design future scenarios and support managers in preparing for various possible developments. 

InnoWerk also fosters collaboration at the international level by contributing projects to the BIS Innovation Hub – a network that develops and tests technological prototypes and proofs of concept for the global central banking community – and by transferring that knowledge to the Bundesbank’s business units. 

Developing new technical solutions is a key task of the InnoWerk unit. One tool that it developed was an AI-based chatbot for banking supervision.