So providing a supportive business environment for such newcomers can give financial centres a decisive competitive edge. The Frankfurt financial centre will certainly benefit from the recent fintech initiative launched by the Hessian Ministry of Economics and Deutsche Börse AG. And even central banks – which don’t normally rank amongst the early adopters of new technologies – are doing experimental work of their own.
As Yves Mersch from the ECB recently told an audience, “From a central bank perspective, in the context of our strategic reflections on the future of the Eurosystem’s market infrastructures, we are certainly open to new technologies and, like many market players, have launched some experimental work with the distributed ledger technology.” Overall, the new digital age opens up huge opportunities for the financial sector.