Artificial intelligence and robo-advisory, distributed ledger technology and smart contracts, data analytics and cloud computing, are only some examples of the available technologies to build the digital bank of the future. Of course, as supervisors, we need to make sure that financial stability and prudential soundness are preserved, while at the same time allowing for technological innovation. Dedicated interfaces (or Application Programming Interfaces as they are widely known), need not remain just a regulatory requirement for banks, built to "tick-the-box". These interfaces, could prove to be much more than just a regulatory requirement to serve payment institutions, due to their ability to seamlessly integrate banking services into an e-commerce experience, providing additional outlets for banking products and opportunities to enhance one's customer base. Their "open architecture" nature enables such services to become scalable and economically sustainable even when they are offered through small e-commerce sites with a limited sales volume. In addition to rationalising the cost structure, banks need to identify avenues to enhance their income capacity. 4/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Last, but no least, consolidation can further enhance efficiency through reaping costcutting synergies created through economies of scale. Nevertheless, this will be determined by market forces and the shareholders of credit institutions. Let me now conclude. The transformation of banks' business model towards digitilisation may give them the opportunity in the long term to enhance their profitability by rationalising their cost structure and providing more efficient, tailor - made services to their customers.

It is a natural part of the economic debate that the Riksbank is being criticised, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it then be better to ignore the criticism and look ahead instead? No, I don’t think so. One important reason is that in the wake of the financial crisis there has been a discussion on the activities and tasks of central banks, what central banks should do and how they should do it. It is, of course, important that our debate on this here in Sweden is anchored in reality and based on how monetary policy has actually been conducted and what it has actually achieved. But meeting the criticism is important not just for the discussion here in Sweden. The debate on Swedish monetary policy also has an international interest and has been followed abroad, not least by other central banks.1 The reason is that a central issue in the international discussion has been to what extent central banks’ policy rates should be used as a complement to macroprudential policy, to counteract the build-up of financial imbalances, for instance, by trying to prevent lending and housing prices from rising too quickly.2 This is what is often called a policy of “leaning against the wind”, and I will hereafter use this expression for the sake of simplicity. Monetary policy in Sweden has in this context been regarded as particularly interesting, as the Riksbank is one of few central banks that, at least this far, has been explicit about taking such considerations into account in its policy-rate decisions.