25.09.2020  How central banks can use digitalisation to better serve the public: the case of payments Navigating the Digitalisation Transformation - Virtual OMFIF-Banque de France Seminar Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor  Good morning, I would like to start off by expressing my gratitude to both the OMFIF and the Banque de France for organising this very interesting and, certainly, timely event. Like many of my esteemed colleagues, I have been vocal about the growing relevance of emerging technologies for the financial system before. In fact, at the Banco de España we are closely monitoring trends in order to fully understand their potential implications and be ready to act quickly, where necessary. Yet despite all its recent history and significance, it is now -in the light of the pandemic- that digitalisation has become even more critical and, possibly, also a catalyst for a tectonic shift across multiple dimensions. Products, services, business models, distribution channels and touch points all over the industry may, indeed, be closer today to an accelerated reshaping than was the case only a few months ago. If anything, these difficult times have, in my view, proven what a valuable ally digitalisation can be to strengthen banks’ resilience and secure the necessary flow of funds to society at large. This has been instrumental to mitigate some of the damage caused by the outbreak. More broadly, the virtualisation of our economic activity during the pandemic has further provided a necessary backstop for many businesses that used to rely solely on their physical presence.
It is true that people who get their pension from an insurance company which fails should have some protection from a compensation scheme which spreads the cost of failures across the industry, but we should not underestimate the risks to them, the industry and the public purse of a major failure – we need to be sure that the basis on which pension promises are  Page 5  made is solid. What have we learnt about the Matching Adjustment since its invention? Given its size and the very important role in plays in our economy, it might surprise some listeners to learn that the MA is a relatively recent invention. It only came into force in the UK as part of the EU’s implementation of Solvency II a little over six years ago. Before that we had for many years allowed insurance companies to take some capital benefit from future returns – the MA took the basic idea of this older regime, and through the process of EU negotiations turned it into a new form. In many ways the EU’s MA has done its job well over those six years, but our experience of seeing it in action has made us worry about three things: First: the past may not be a good guide to the future. I explained that the MA allows insurance companies to recognise as capital up-front part of the income they expect to earn on their assets in the future.