jorgovanka tabakovic : digitalisation, system upgrade - delivering the digital dividend opening speech by dr jorgovanka tabakovic, governor of the national bank of serbia, at the presentation of the european bank for reconstruction and development ’ s ( ebrd ) transition report 2021 – 2022, belgrade, 11 march 2022. * * * ladies and gentlemen, esteemed colleagues, welcome to the national bank of serbia! we are the hosts today, but this event is organised by our partners from the european bank for reconstruction and development ( ebrd ). therefore, i ’ d like to welcome mr colangeli, whom i have met at the kopaonik business forum, as well as mr sanfey and mr plekhanov, who are the face of the ebrd before us today. the fact that the ebrd has compiled and published its transition report for 28 years tells us that this report has passed the test of time and has the seal of approval of its audience. each year, the focus of the report is on an area that contributes to faster and sustainable economic transition. in the latest report, this area is digitalisation. i will focus on the fourth chapter of the report – fintech and banks in transition, which pertains to the digitalisation of financial systems and the effects which the implementation of new technologies has on the financial system as we know it. it is old news that over the past several years there have been substantial global changes in the financial services sector. banks, which are traditional participants in this market, are increasingly joined by new institutions from the technological sector, offering innovative products. we are talking about fintech, as well as international tech giants, notably in the social media sphere – the so - called big tech. how do banks react to their emergence? they have a choice to either treat the new market participants as competition, or at least as an incentive that would encourage them to speed up their own work on innovations and development of advanced services. the second choice is to welcome these companies as partners, and to make full use of the effects of such synergy on the development of society. in the modern age, which requires fast adjustment to client needs, everyone is creating niche markets where they can have a competitive edge. and as long as society as a whole is benefiting from changes that do not threaten stability, and yet save time and money, they will be one of the factors of development

. and this is a shared objective of all of us. in this area, central banks are not mere passive onlookers adjusting to new circumstances, but are often the ones that create new circumstances, providing regulatory and infrastructural basis for financial sector development. it is true that everyone can hope for a miracle, but it is also true that responsible policy makers cannot rely on miracles – instead, they solely rely on work, knowledge, policy coordination and proactivity. and it is precisely in difficult times that we can see how each of us has done their job and how successful we have been in doing so. serbia did not need an incentive for this, because digitalisation has been among our strategic goals for almost a decade. today, the national bank of serbia is a guarantor of stability in the full sense of that word. at the same time, we are also a cautious regulator that seeks to strike a balance between safety and development. the national bank of serbia is among the central banks that were the first to recognise the importance of the process of digitalisation of financial services, which is why we were prepared in terms of both infrastructure and regulations to face the challenges brought by the pandemic. we have introduced a state - of - the - art instant payment system, and we did not stop there. we continued to develop it further by introducing a number of additional services – such as instant 1 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches payments at brick - and - mortar and online points of sale using m - banking apps, or paying bills by scanning the qr code, which is an option that i believe everyone is keen to use. there is also the service of transferring money by entering the recipient ’ s mobile phone number only, entitled simply “ transfer ”. as electronic services were already developed and available in serbia, the pandemic only sped up the transformation of the financial system further, encouraging consumers to communicate with financial institutions almost entirely through digital means. thanks to the video - identification option, serbian financial service consumers are among the first in europe to conclude distance financial contracts. what do figures say about this whole process? everything that has been achieved in the past ten years is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that the annual number of transactions performed using m - banking services increased 100 times. more than 82 million transactions have been performed in the instant payments system of the national bank of serbia since its launch. the number of concluded distance contracts rose by 44, 882 relative