talked a lot about past achievements and future challenges. and i have talked about the need to work together as a team. but, of course, all good teams need good leaders. and speaking of good leaders brings me to aurel schubert. as aurel is due to retire soon, i would like to take the opportunity tonight to say a few words about what he has done for this institution. for eight years now, he has steered the ecb statistics ship with great competence. aurel has made invaluable contributions to some of our most ambitious projects : the granular securities holdings statistics, the mmsr and anacredit. thanks to his leadership, supervisory statistics were available from the start of european banking supervision. he helped amend our statistical legal framework to align it with international standards. but, of course, his career started long before he became director general of statistics. he has worked in the field since 1997. over these past 21 years, he has participated in 90 meetings of the statistics committee and chaired 34 of them. he has also been a vice - chair of the irving fisher committee, a co - chair of the european statistical forum, and chair of the esrb contact group on data. all these achievements are facts, of course. and they show that aurel knows his subject, thinks strategically and masters the politics. these are all important aspects of being a good leader. but they are not the only things that are important. a leader cannot act alone ; they rely on other people. and aurel is an outstanding people manager. i think he can teach us all a thing or two when it comes to forming a team, keeping people motivated, managing change and, most important of all, creating an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect. in that sense, i see him as a role model. aurel, i thank you very much. conclusion ladies and gentlemen, in my speech tonight, i have reminded you of some of your many achievements, both recent and past. but what matters most is not the next big project or the latest database. what matters most are the high professional standards which you have all maintained in your work. and, if we want to keep fighting alternative facts with real facts and fake news with real news, you must continue on this path with the same conviction as you started out with in 1998. and now let me conclude with a fact of life that is all too true : dinner speeches are always too long. there is no way to spin this any

way they do business. for us at the hkma, this raises important questions about balancing risks and rewards. 24. one example is the greater use of artificial intelligence ( ai ) in areas like credit assessment or transaction monitoring. this can offer improved efficiency and accuracy. but we have to ask what sort of operational risks might be involved. what sort of governance framework will banks need to ensure proper accountability? could it lead to new ethical or other issues? for example, could the use of ai in credit scoring result in unfair treatment for certain groups of customers? will ai output require additional “ human ” perceptive oversight? 25. to help banks, the hkma recently issued two circulars, one on high - level risk management principles on the use of ai, and the other on the related consumer protection issues. we tried not to make these overly prescriptive, as this is a new area. the fact is that banks and ourselves are learning together. we all still need to explore exactly how technology should be implemented and overseen in practice. 26. the hkma is conducting research in ai applications to help everyone. we are publishing some results today, in the form of an information sheet of facts and figures from an industrywide survey. one key finding is that almost 90 % of our retail banks have already implemented, or are planning to implement, ai in their business applications. we will publish a series of reports in the coming months to provide more insights into the application of ai in the financial services industry. 27. we also want to work more with banks and the technology sector on developing regulatory technology, or regtech. we all know that data analytics and machine learning can help the industry perform compliance work more accurately and more cost - effectively. as a start, the hkma will organise an “ aml regtech forum ” later this month to bring together the banking industry, technology firms and other experts to explore technological collaboration on aml / cft issues. we hope this will give everyone more understanding of the critical pain points in banks ’ aml / cft work. 3 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches 28. meanwhile, the hkma has embarked on its own digitalisation programme. this cuts across multiple functions, including banking supervision, anti - money laundering, financial stability surveillance, research and investment. 29. where supervision is concerned, we have started a pilot to collect more granular data from banks. such data will enable us to have a fuller and more up - to - date picture