Facilitating also means helping players in the ecosystem to engage with each other and find solutions without necessarily resorting to regulatory measures. It is in this spirit that we run the ACPR-AMF FinTech Forumand that we have created working groups or task forces in order to make concrete progress on important issues for the ecosystem, such as the access of digital asset service providers to the bank accounts and banking services they need. Admittedly, dialogue does not solve everything, but we very often find that many difficulties can be ironed out through improved dialogue and a better understanding of the practices and technologies used by the various stakeholders. Second objective: experiment. Here I would like to give two different illustrations of this approach. The exploratory workshops conducted by ACPR on the use of artificial intelligence in the financial sector are an example of what experimentation can bring not only to a supervisory authority but also to the entire ecosystem. Indeed, these concrete experiments have enabled the ACPR, based on specific use cases, to examine the code of the algorithms, their intrinsic performance, their integration into operational processes, and their control and governance environment. Drawing on this experiment, in order to share widely the lessons it has learned, the ACPR published astudy last June outlining what the framework for the proper use of these future tools could look like.
Sabine Lautenschläger: Digital na(t)ive? Fintechs and the future of banking Statement by Ms Sabine Lautenschläger, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, at an ECB Fintech Workshop, Frankfurt am Main, 27 March 2017. * * * We will never know who did it and when exactly it was done – all of that is lost in the mists of time. But about 4,000 years ago, one of our ancestors invented the wheel. It was one of the most important inventions in the entire history of humanity. Ever since, our lives have been shaped by innovations. Some of these innovations have made our life better – just think of vaccines or the telephone. Others have had more ambivalent impact – think of nuclear power. In any case, it is always hard to guess where an innovation will take us. And it is all too easy to get it wrong. As the President of IBM said in 1943: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” He got it wrong, it seems. And so did Robert Metcalfe in 1995. As the founder of a tech company, he predicted that “the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” The internet did not collapse. Instead, it has changed our lives. Could you live without the internet? Could you live without a mobile phone? Our entire life has become digital, and this includes the way we do banking.