benoit cœure : the future of financial market infrastructures spearheading progress without renouncing safety speech mr benoit cœure, member of the executive board of the european central bank, at the central bank payments conference, singapore, 26 june 2018. * * * i wish to thank the organisers for inviting me to speak here today. 1 it ’ s great to see so many familiar faces and to be back in singapore, which as an undeniably cosmopolitan city is a particularly suitable backdrop for talks on the multifaceted nature of today ’ s global market infrastructures. the message i would like to convey in my remarks this morning is simple : while i share the excitement around distributed ledgers, blockchain and digitalisation more broadly, and while i believe that, like in the past, central banks should not shy away from potentially disruptive technological innovations, we should be mindful of the potential financial stability consequences and we should start by first picking the low hanging fruit and upgrading our current payment systems. in fact, i believe that an incremental modernisation of our existing retail and wholesale payment systems may well succeed in bringing about many of the benefits promised by the current crop of immature technologies. the challenges of digital innovation let me start with the challenges first. there is no doubt that the fourth industrial revolution is dramatically changing the way we communicate, the way we shop, the way we learn and, quite frankly, great parts of the way we live our lives. artificial intelligence and exponential increases in computing power are forcing firms to re - examine how they do business. the financial services industry is no exception. digitalisation has already left bustling stock exchange floors in demise. high - frequency trading is increasingly shaping market dynamics. and in the future, thousands of financial analysts may be replaced with robo - advisors. the financial industry is often the industry spearheading technological change. distributed ledger technologies ( dlt ) are a case in point. they have applications well beyond finance. the diamond industry, for example, is using digital ledgers to track and record their assets. but it is the financial sector, and payments in particular, where progress is arguably moving fastest. financial institutions and market infrastructures worldwide are exploring dlt for payments and post - trading. 2 the world food program uses a blockchain - based system to handle payments for food aid in jordan. 3 central banks, as both overseers and operators of payment systems, and as sole issuers of banknotes

stock of bonds that we have already bought. so even when we phase out our net purchases of bonds, the accommodation will still remain in place and be sufficient to ensure the necessary support to growth. the buoyant growth coupled with the monetary accommodation will take us back to an inflation rate which is in line with our goal. there ’ s little doubt about that. hence, it is time to take a decision now on scaling back our bond purchases at the beginning of next year. and this point leads to a second challenge. we need to think about how to bring our unconventional measures to an end. we need to look ahead and discuss what the exit might look like. i am aware that this requires us to communicate very carefully. on the one hand, we must help markets to get an idea of what the exit will look like. on the other hand, we mustn ’ t confuse them with vague or ambiguous ideas. 1 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches it ’ s a delicate balance we have to strike. and in my view, we need to find this balance now. thank you for your attention. 2 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches