 Hi everyone, it's great to be here, great to see such a roomful of people and second time hosting here in London and second time hosting a panel on regulation and innovation. So I'm really excited and we've made a lot of progress since I hosted the last panel and I see Sarah here. We've worked a lot together and I have a very distinguished panelist, should I say, collection today, curation. And thank you all for being here and they're so distinguished that I need to read their accomplishments also, excuse me for reading. But these women are very accomplished each in their own right. So Francesca Hopwood Road is leading the BIS Innovation Hub London Center since February of this year. She previously headed up the FCA's RecTech and Subtech program of work and in this role she created a culture enabling the identification and exploration of cutting edge data science techniques and their application to financial services regulation including the world's first digital sandbox and suite of subtech tools. Anna Wallace is senior program officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her role is to leverage technology to enable financial regulators in managing the risk posed by emerging financial services models without impeding innovation required to drive financial inclusion. Anna has 20 plus years of experience in public policy with expertise, we all have 20 plus years. With expertise in financial regulation, digital financial services and consumer protection in her most recent senior leadership role Anna built the innovation department at the UK's financial conduct authority. And Jennifer Lasseter, executive director of the Digital Dollar Project. In addition to her current role as ED of DDP, Jennifer serves on the World Economic Forum's Global Blockchain Business Council as a member of the Progressive Council Institutes Mosaic Economic Project. Prior to DDP, Jennifer was a founding member of Innovation Tech Lab at the federal FDIC and held positions in offices of technology and innovation at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB. So, very diverse, first-sex, very diverse, there's a lot of experience, many years and I'm hoping that this is gonna be a fun discussion. So, first of all, let's focus on open source. Can you each share with the audience your organization's engagement in open source and the experience with it? What have you leveraged so far? To help your organization's mission and what do you see going forward from an open source perspective? He's going fast. I know, that's a good question. I'm happy to start, I'm happy to start. Hi everyone, Jen Lasseter, Digital Dollar Project. We are a non-profit based out of the United States focused on furthering discussion around a US central bank digital currency. And we believe, and we do that through experimentation and education and policy work. We believe that the infrastructure that underpins the digital dollar serves a very critical public good and the modernization of that infrastructure then further ensures longevity of the US dollar and creates prosperity for future generations. So, one would imagine that if we believe the infrastructure that we move money on whatever form that money takes serves a public good that adopting an open source ethos would be the best path forward towards exploring and building that future ecosystem. So, how do we use open source? I am so excited to be here, to be talking to you all and to share an announcement that we made in June which is a partnership with the Digital Dollar Project and the Linux Foundation, Phinos and Hyperledger specifically to really bring both collate the existing open source central bank digital currency projects today and to highlight them, but then really truly bring the weight of the open source community and open source tools to bear on that experimentation and really accelerate the conversation in a very democratized manner. And if you are interested, I think when, let's see, Gabba was talking earlier, I can't find him in the audience, but he had mentioned, right, we don't build the projects for you, we build them with you. We are in the process of defining those objectives for that initiative right now and you can go to any of our websites, though I will encourage you to go to digitaldollarproject.org and sign up to participate in the initiative and be part of building how we're going to achieve that outcome. Who is next? Oh, good. We'll have a logical. So when I work at the Gates Foundation and obviously what you know about the Gates Foundation technology is at the centre of what we do in terms of our mission. We are fighting health inequality, disease, but also financial inequality. I moved from the UK Financial Conduct Authority as a regulator who had really in the last five years tried to drive innovation in the interests of consumers, right? The regulator had been part of the regulator for a lot longer than that, where really we tried to stamp out bad behaviour and what we were trying to do through driving innovation was try to kind of come up with good solutions and be part of that, be part of the solution, like get us out of our comfort zone to help that and I think with the Gates Foundation what they are trying to do is really ensure that those benefits are felt by those who are most vulnerable, who are poorest and who generally always lag in terms of getting the benefits and I think in terms of benefits of technology as well that lag is very pronounced. So that is what our mission is. At the moment we have a goal for 2030 to get 80% of the world's population included in formal financial systems. We believe that being included in a formal financial system does help with poverty alleviation. So we are on the side of financial services, but it has got to be done in the right way, right? And that is why I have been brought on board. We are doing really well in terms of that mission and that is not just down to the Gates Foundation, obviously it is down to the efforts of governments, regulators and other donor countries as well. But in terms of the journey that we have been on, we have been looking at driving financial inclusion and that has involved real-time payment systems, it has involved digital ID and open source has been a central component of our strategy at the financial services for the poor team. I have now been brought on as a regulator to help them think about, okay, we have built that financial inclusion, how do we keep it? How are we resilient? How do we maintain trust in those financial services? Because it is pretty fragile, right? And we have seen that with the quality over COVID. So for me, thinking about how we can help regulators exploit technology, use technology and catalyse the advancements in technology into these emerging economies is a critical part of my strategy. We are in the early days of that strategy development. We have got some really exciting partners and Air who are partners with FINOS are a partner for the Gates Foundation. So for me, hopefully today I am here to talk about some of the problems and some of the opportunities and really kind of exciting, engage this community. I just want to stay and listen, frankly, to Anna and Jen. So I am Francesca. I head up the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub London Centre, one of seven centres across the world. And our remit is to develop technological public goods across six domains. So CBDCs, of course. Next-gen FMIs, RegTech, SubTech, Cyber Security, Green Finance and Open Finance. We have had a little bit about some of that earlier this morning. Our remit is to work in partnership to collaborate across the central banking community, across the private sector, the public sector at large to really identify emerging critical trends as they pertain to the central banking world and then think about how we can start to develop proof of concepts, prototypes that start to enable and formulate what good could look like in utilising those trends and then deploying them for the central banking community. And I think what we have heard so far and I think what is a really interesting piece that I think sits at the heart of open source is actually that knowledge share, that collaboration, that validation, that enhancing. And I think what is so critical for us at the Bank for International Settlements is thinking about how do we bring together that community, how do we enhance and leverage that community so that we can build on, we can enable the kind of technology that we are building for the benefit of many. The central banking community is large. There are various different issues, agendas. We have had a lot about talent and skills this morning for example. So open source, the ability to harness that in the pursuit of what we are doing is absolutely critical. And one of the things at BIS Innovation Hub that we have done in the last couple of years is start to develop BIS Open Tech which is a kind of a first nascent step and I think that is a really important part of the conversation today which is about where different people are at in this space, where different actors are at to start to show the benefits of this kind of fora for really enhancing and enabling activity across this space. That leads right into my next question. So you guys have spent some time at the FCA and you've done some really fantastic groundbreaking work there. What about the regulators? So I always feel like we are sort of the bridge, open source is the bridge between the participants in the financial system and those who, as Jim said, they are coming and they would like to make sure that the financial system operates quite well. How do you see the regulators engaging? What is needed? What are the next steps? How can we bring them to that round table that we are trying to create? I can start. I think it is about recognizing where they are at. I know that sounds a really obvious thing to say but I think it is really important. When I was at the Financial Conduct Authority, one of the things that we knew absolutely was about really engaging with the wider community, understanding what was new, what was evolving, where the insight and capability was developing. What could we learn from that? How do we build those bridges and those nodes, if you like, to bring that insight in to learn and leverage off it? In the context clearly that we were, I was and I now am part of the central banking community and with that comes a very different set of responsibilities and reflections and frameworks. One of the things I sort of made for the audience to reflect on is open source is going to mean different things to different communities. There are going to be different responses, different appetites for it. I think there is an educative piece but there is also thinking about the domains to start to play in. Some are going to be more receptive to the benefits of open source. Others may be not quite ready to go there yet. When I was at the FCA, the relationships with Jen in her previous role at CFPB, understanding what the CFPB had done around open source, understanding from them what had worked well, I think our previous speaker spoke really eloquently about what had not worked so well, the importance of understanding the missteps or the paths that were a little rockier. What was that about? What can we learn from that? How do we really want to build that in? I think that openness and transparency amongst the regulatory community is really key but also thinking about kind of the steps that one needs to take to move along that path to kind of understanding and then thinking about the application of open source in that context. Did you want to talk about your specific experience? I was thinking we can pay to the U.S. and then come back to the U.K. I cannot agree more. Actually, I'll say a couple things about understanding, at least in terms of the U.S. financial regulators, where they're at, find your people. Find the people within the agencies that are looking to create an open space for this type of experimentation and to establish connections vis-a-vis a private public partnership. If you go in the U.S. to the CFPB website, oh my gosh, I'm blanking on it after 10 years, if you Google it, it'll take you right there. You can go on to the website where all of their open source projects are listed as well as direct links to their GitHub repositories and I would encourage you to start to engage on a project-based level and then through those efforts you will be invited into wider open source conversations with the Bureau specifically. If you go to the United States Digital Service website, usds.gov, I do know that one, they have an entire center of excellence centered around open source activities across the entirety of the U.S. federal government. There are many ways for you to engage in that space and again, it's getting your foot in the door and then being able to understand that these agencies are resource strapped and so I will always push back on the, you know, government is stodgy and government is not in touch. Technologists that have worked there for 40 years and they can't understand, some of that is true, a lot of that is not true and it's a matter of being able to capitalize on your skill set and bring the weight of your skill set into this public-minded space and to teach them and they want to learn from you. So my second encouragement will be once you've established those relationships don't be afraid to offer to do a demo or to offer to do a talk with the agencies team. I was at CFPB, I went to FDIC. At FDIC I did several convenings across all financial regulators where we brought in expert speakers to talk and open source was one of the topics. So please raise your hand. It is very welcome and it is very valuable in the context. I will also say in terms of digital currency in the U.S. what is very encouraging this really whole of government approach that we're seeing come to bear, right? It started with the Federal Reserve Board releasing their discussion paper for public comment. I hope many of you or the entities that employ you did comment. Those are important steps to really showing diversity and perspective about what the Federal Reserve is considering. We saw the White House release an executive order calling for private public partnership around building a digital currency ecosystem understanding the existing payment system with the lens of national security in particular and security which we know the open source community can lean heavily into. And then we've seen several public comment requests come out from commerce which was talking about competitiveness again, open source 101. We saw Treasury send a framework to the White House last week that was emphasizing the need for global cooperation. This is interoperability between the infrastructure that I talked about in my opening statement and how we're building it and how we're building it in an open, transparent and safe way. These are the principles of open source. It's probably some of the initial talking points that brought you into the ecosystem. There are several opportunities for you to engage particularly around finance and if you really want to get wonky, you can go to Project Hamilton's GitHub repo, right? Their CBDC code is very academic based. I will just put that up out front. It's hard to dive in from a developer perspective but it is an entry way and it is a path and they are looking for public engagement. So lots of opportunity to engage and again this further enhancement of having a use case that helps with the cultural shift that says open source is not immediately a bad thing. It does not immediately open us to risk as regulators. It is not unscalable. It is not secure, right? We can use these as use cases to teach the government and then to help them build what this future infrastructure looks like. Back to the UK. I'm not going to do the UK but they have enough people helping them in the UK. They don't need me anymore. I think from my perspective, if you think about people and connections and culture, Jen and Francesca are two very important people for you. If you want to work in financial services and open source, they are going to open doors for you. You have talked about other people but I think you two are really pioneers and they have, with Jen at the moment, she has the broad perspective and is specifically looking at CBDCs which might not be my strategy and my priority but it is where a lot of intellectual property and some of the best minds and thinkers are focused on those problems. If that is the place where we have got to craft out the model of engagement and what works best that is good for me because then we can just pick that up quickly and start to use that kind of model engagement for regulators on issues that I care about. I think are their lived experiences. Francesca, the same. If we can solve the model of engagement for regulators with open source at Francesca's level, then that has huge influence over regulators. They are the central bank of central banks. It is a difficult, it is a kind of more complex strategy to follow but thank goodness Francesca has got the experience and also has that mandate to do the experimentation and the POC model that a lot of central bankers don't have. The world I care about which is those that have newly been included in financial services and the regulators that are responsible for that. We spoke about financial inclusion so we have had a 50% increase in access to financial services in the last decade and most of that has been felt in emerging economies. I am an ex-regulator and the shoes of that regulator they have had this huge explosion of new users in their system. I am a risk manager. This is not the best news for me. I am trying to keep on top of it. I am not digitally savvy and I may have some teams that are digitally savvy but they are not necessarily looking at the things I care about consumer protection. More doing the modelling and the monetary supply side of things and the interest rate. They are not doing market conduct supervision things like fraud management or whatever. A lot of the players that are driving this financial inclusion are new to me. They are not banks they are mobile money operators. So it is I see this as an opportunity thank goodness and the good news is the pandemic has also led most regulators to see that they have got to become more digitally savvy. So there is a huge opportunity there but there isn't the Francescas and the Gens working in these fields yet. So for me the call is but there also isn't a huge amount of regulation right. So I know a lot of the red tech work that James leading which I think is essential and critical is about trying to digitise very complex systems which were never designed to be digitised in the first place. Actually what you have in a lot of these emerging economies is not complex systems there is not a huge amount of reporting there is a complete lack of digital interaction between the providers and the regulator so we could look at outcomes and think of risks and actually design these processes with your mindset at the heart of it. So I feel like there is a huge opportunity but we don't have the institutions the organisations the connective tissue there to help us. India is probably an example where there has been a huge amount of development and we have got our open source digital identity community there. But I would love for us to fix on some of the problems that the world's purists are really concerned about which is being defrauded through the use of their mobile phone being ripped off in cost and charges because they're not literate not being able to really exercise complaints in the way that we all expect with financial services are not able to hold the financial system to account. I know there are incredible solutions and there's a lot of assets already out there in the open source community that my partners have been using. So for me there is a kind of you know you've been talking about the culture and the places and the ways to engage I'm looking more to re-evaluate that connective tissue and to inspire through some use cases but obviously it's for organizations I think like Phinos and yourself to also give us feedback of like okay so what do these channels need to look like and how can we create those systems and structures and the Gates Foundation would love to be a part of that. That's very interesting. It's interesting to see that you know on the one hand within the established financial system we have lots of rules that have not been digitized and a lot of the work that we're doing is trying to create the digital version of the existing rules. On the other hand what you're talking about is there's lots of markets where the rules have not yet been established so maybe that's even right for a ground for digitization in the sense that you can experiment and you don't have to break anything or prove to anyone that something is indeed working because there's nothing there so it's great ground to start with and maybe that's one way to bring these things together. Anything else that's on your sort of wish list of how can either a fintech or a technical services company or a financial institution engage say through us you know one of the things we have is our Reg Innovation SIG where we discuss ideas and problems that people want to collaborate on so any wish list kind of suggestions for us to chew on later. I suppose it's to pick up on the point that Jen made which is engage with us and I know sometimes it's hard and I know sometimes we seem impenetrable and all these different things but there are spaces and actually we need your feedback on how those spaces are working and are they facilitating the right kind of conversations with the right groups of people. I think that's really key. At BIS we have our open tech platform, we have our innovation summits but there's lots of other kind of as we've talked about connective tissues, ways that we need to surface that conversation, ways we need to share insight into kind of so that open source can be a fuel, a way of democratising and enabling knowledge transfer which I think to all the points that Anna has made so eloquently that is absolutely key in terms of thinking about how the role the open source and the value it can bring. I think it's about sometimes also saying actually we've got this insight to share we'd like to share it with you we'd like to create these spaces for conversation I think that kind of dialogue and engagement I think for us is really critical. I'll be calling you to join the SIG. And your team. Yeah, I mean I think from from the Gates perspective I think some I mean I've already called out some of the feedback thinking about how we get you involved in this consumer protection ecosystem we have some blueprints from the Gates Foundation of doing that with the creation of open source real-time payment systems doing it with digital ID regulation for me has a slightly different nuance you're dealing with regulators and there is good and bad regulators give us trust in something where we give our money to a system and trust that we will get it back at some point. Regulators are a critical aspect of that but they bring certain challenges and thinking about modes and we do have a lot of innovation offices now that could be landing slots but I think getting feedback from you on what's worked best and what hasn't and that can be from other projects I think thinking about the kinds of assets that you need to thrive as well because we're all kind of in the digital public goods space so if there's research evidence you know we've spoken about collaboration but are there other digital public goods that help this community thrive you know transparency is a slight problem in some of our markets but a philanthropic entity like ours can work with partners to try and help the proliferation of data or whatever it is that you guys need to thrive so that would be another aspect that I'd be really interested to get feedback we do have some partners as well and I think Aira and also a really good partner the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance are now working with the open source community so reaching out to there and innovations and poverty action or a third party all three of them when I said I'm coming here to talk to you guys they were like oh my god okay I mean I got documents there's a whole set of links that they want me to share with you so they're three partners that are really excited and trying to figure out a way to do it so please reach out to them thanks I'll again put a plug for Open Digital Currency initiative please sign up even if you want to lurk in the shadows for a while that's acceptable and see the movement or if you want to dive right in shape it digital dollar project again we have that experimentation side and policy side and they feed each other as they should right it should be a symbiotic relationship easier said than done as Anna and I were talking about earlier today through our experimentation we work with the private sector we're here to establish that private public partnership with the U.S. government and the decision makers the Federal Reserve Board around a U.S. digital dollar you are the experimentation so if you are interested in participating in a pilot I promise you they are managed quite tightly small in scope quick MVP we are typically looking to experiment and turn around analysis and open data in a three to four month window I would invite you to reach out to me I'm happy to let you know if your institution is already a participant with DDP and how we can get you involved and engaged if you're not get you into that experience of touching these new emerging technologies so you can both learn about the impact in this future system to your strategy and operations while also teaching and showing the value of open source technologies in this space and I'm trying to think any other calls to action Jane can we send you a list of links we have a break out as well and do come to the Reginnovation so you can share it with everyone we're woefully out of time but this is really exciting we do have another break out session later this afternoon if you want to come we want to share more stories from the trenches more do's and don'ts advice a little bit of we have a rektek joining us, Regnosis will be at the table as well so different stories and Q&A so I know we didn't have time right now please join us for our break out session later this afternoon and we'll continue the conversation it's for a topic as potentially boring as regulation this is really exciting so thank you all for listening and we'll see you