edX, for example, includes over 130 economics and finance courses offered by prestigious providers such as Harvard, MIT and IMF. In short, both the quantity and quality of human capital investment matter. Agility is also a key aspect. Human capital investment must adapt and evolve with its operating environment. The fintech wave has taught us an important lesson; opportunity favours the bold and the wellprepared. More so in times of change. Experience has shown that it is not easy to change even a single function, let alone an entire organisation. That brings me back to another observation of Newton: “The larger the mass, the larger the inertia”. While Newton’s law holds true in physics, bankers can yet defy this axiom by thinking innovatively and being prepared well in advance. The next wave of innovation, growth and emerging industries is primed for release from its current state of inertia. At the moment, financing remains concentrated in traditional economic sectors. Less than 1% of SME financing approvals are directed to new growth areas. While up to 74% of financial sector talent is high-skilled, financing future industries for long term economic growth requires us to think ahead, with new and fresh perspectives. We need talent that can identify and distil the needs and risks of these new growth areas. For a bank, this may mean recruiting and developing not only conventional bankers, but also software engineers, data scientists and technology strategists.

It is essential for the financial sector to manage climate-related risks, while at the same time, support the economic transition. This means financial institutions have to internalize climate considerations into their business operations and risk management framework and offer financial products and services to help business transition especially in the high-emission and vulnerable sectors without disrupting the economy and leaving someone behind. However, there is no denying that financial sector has substantial gaps and challenges to overcome in order to achieve such goals, particularly on the risk management perspective. Financial sector resilience would be undermined by the climate-related risks without appropriate measures in a timely manner. Thus, central banks and financial regulators have a crucial role in building capacity and facilitating guidelines and tools needed for climate-related and environmental risks. The first step should be providing concrete expectation and guidance for financial industry to uplift their business operations, risk management, and disclosure that align with international standards. Simultaneously, the infrastructures and common tools for climate risk management such as climate scenario analysis, stress test, and climate-related data  1/2  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  must be put in place to create an enabling ecosystem where financial institutions and regulators could assess and monitor the risks effectively. Ladies and Gentlemen, Looking ahead, it is thus inevitable that our regulatory and supervisory frameworks should take into account sustainability and climate-related factors. The conduct of prudential framework in this new landscape will arguably be the most difficult task as it is relatively new and still evolving.