The OMFIF Podcast

How can blockchain and new technologies support ESG?

Bénédicte Nolens, head of the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong, and Xiaochen Zhang, principal manager at Amazon Web Services, join Katie-Ann Wilson, head of policy analysis at the OMFIF Digital Monetary Institute, to explore how the public and private sector are using new technologies to overcome the challenges facing green finance. They discuss the process of green bond tokenisation and application of distributed ledger technology across market infrastructure, how the intersection of blockchain, cloud and artificial intelligence can address the whole value chain of climate data, and what practical steps can be taken to ensure policy-makers reap the benefits of new technologies for environmental, social and governance considerations.

 

Integrating ESG risks into investment frameworks and decision-making processes

Xinting Jia, ESG investment strategist, APAC, State Street Global Advisors, joins Emma McGarthy, head of OMFIF’s Sustainable Policy Institute, to discuss the methods and tools investors use when integrating environmental, social and governance factors into their investment decisions. With sustainability-related risks increasingly on the agenda, they delve into the metrics and targets that should be used to assess physical and transition risks. They explore the main challenges in transitioning investment portfolios, ask how to manage supply chains and identify the information and data needed to conduct robust ESG analysis.

Consumer attitudes and design of a CBDC

Wolfram Seidemann, chief executive officer of G+D Currency Technology, joins John Orchard, CEO of OMFIF, for a discussion about the key findings from the joint OMFIF-G+D survey on consumer attitudes to CBDC and what factors are important for CBDCs to be successful. Their conversation also addresses how G+D is providing leading technology in the digital currency space.

Next steps for Project Hamilton and CBDC payments

Robert Bench, assistant vice-president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and Aman Cheema, global head of global real-time payments at FIS, join Patricia Haas Cleveland, US president of OMFIF, to discuss the key findings of the Boston Fed’s recent phase one report on Project Hamilton and look ahead to the challenges and next steps for a viable central bank digital currency. The conversation also touches on the global CBDC sandbox from FIS which is to be used by countries to assess the feasibility and viability of launching a CBDC. 

The many facets of European debt sustainability

Gloria Bartoli, professor of public management at the LUISS Guido Carli in Rome, speaks with Taylor Pearce, economist at OMFIF, about debt sustainability and fiscal reform in the European Union. Drawing on her extensive experience in international organisations and the design of international policy and regulatory frameworks, Bartoli provides her view of the debt landscape in Europe and analyses the possibility of returning to a pre-pandemic status quo. The discussion explores how the Next Generation EU fund and Recovery and Resilience Facility – introduced as part of the European Union’s emergency pandemic relief measures – can lay the groundwork for more robust reform of the European fiscal framework, Stability and Growth Pact and debt rules.

AIIB’s outlook for borrowing in 2022

Domenico Nardelli, treasurer at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, joins Marcin Stepan, managing director of OMFIF’s Sovereign Debt Institute, to discuss the borrowing landscape in Asia. In the current potentially volatile environment, with risks of raising rates challenging market conditions, they discuss the AIIB’s issuance ambitions and strategies. They reflect on the growth of the green, social and sustainable bond market and take a look at some important developments for 2022.

The economic impact of financial sanctions against Russia

The West has rolled out tough financial sanctions against Moscow with unprecedented speed, magnitude and multilateral co-operation. This move will not stop Russian tanks, but it will squarely impoverish President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Danny Glaser, global head of jurisdictional services at K2 Integrity and former assistant secretary at the US Treasury overseeing sanctions, and Christopher Smart, chief global strategist and head of the Barings Institute, as well as former US Treasury/National Security Council special assistant to the president, join OMFIF's US Chair Mark Sobel. They discuss the efficacy, historical context and the economic consequences of the sanctions across the globe. 

Exploring the link between gold and central bank digital currencies

What impact will the emergence of central bank digital currencies and cryptoassets have on the gold market? John Reade, chief market strategist at the World Gold Council, and Bob Wardrop, director and co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, join David Marsh, OMFIF chairman, to explore this question. They expand on topics emerging from the recent OMFIF and World Gold Council paper ‘Central bank digital currencies and gold’, including those surrounding geopolitics, inflation, trust and the role of gold in a future dominated by CBDCs and cryptoassets.

The revival of inflation and the threat to central bank independence

Charles Goodhart, emeritus professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, talks to David Marsh, chairman of OMFIF, about his theses on the effects of demography and immigration, the revival of inflation and the threat to central bank independence. He sees this latter danger as particularly virulent from right-wing governments, including from the possibility of a re-elected Donald Trump (or indeed from a return of any Republican administration in the US).  Goodhart is a veteran central bank watcher who was a founder member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee in 1997-2000. He has warned for years that central banks may be unable to tighten interest rates sufficiently to ward off inflation because this would further exacerbate the budgetary problems of debt-ridden governments. In his prescient book from 2020, co-authored with Manoj Pradhan, The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival, the two authors explain the societal and economic changes wrought an ageing society.  They believe that the fall in the workforce will inevitably shift bargaining power to lower-paid workers and trade unions. Political resistance, they forecast, will prevent immigration from being large enough to reinflate the supply of labour and diminish inflationary pressures.

The future of cross-border payments: achieving instant and frictionless payments

Following the publication of ‘The future of payments 2021’ report, Saskia Devolder, strategic programme director, SWIFT, joins John Orchard, chief executive officer of OMFIF, to discuss the financial community’s collective cross-border payments initiatives aimed at overcoming challenges to instant and frictionless payments. They also discuss predictions of what the payments space will look like in five years and the role of CBDCs in the future of payments.