I am both delighted and honoured to be invited here to accept the annual prize of the Liberální Institute for 1999 and to hold the annual lecture. I would like to express my profound gratitude for being awarded this distinction.
If nothing else, the wave of digitalisation has unleashed a strong sense of optimism about the future – fintechs bursting with fresh ideas and business models, customers keen to adopt digital banking, and, not least, the necessary technical capabilities such as broadband internet, especially, have certainly seen to that.