The Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub published the BISIH Academia Workshop Report 2025, a non-attributable record of its first academia workshop held on 10–13 June 2025 and the launch point for a structured academic engagement programme. The discussions focused on how advanced technologies could be applied in the financial sector, framed around policy needs such as security, interoperability, inclusivity and regulatory compliance. The report synthesises insights across seven themes: artificial intelligence (AI), architecture and interoperability, privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), trusted execution environments (TEEs), self-sovereign identity and verifiable credentials, decentralised finance (DeFi) and scalable distributed systems. Key points include expectations that large language models and AI tools will materially affect the economy while increasing exposure to AI-assisted cyberattacks; the view that cross-system interoperability is often constrained more by legal, governance and political differences than by technical integration; and a preference for “privacy by design” approaches, while noting scalability constraints for PETs in high-throughput use cases. TEEs were discussed as a mature option for secure, low-overhead processing in high-volume environments, alongside issues around trust in hardware manufacturers and vulnerability management. The identity sessions positioned central banks as validators and enablers rather than issuers of digital identities, highlighted governance and interoperability challenges for verifiable credentials, and expressed reservations about biometric identifiers. DeFi discussions emphasised the difficulty of compliance and accountability in permissionless systems and the need for nuanced categorisation, while also drawing a clear distinction between stablecoins and tokenised wholesale central bank money. Next steps outlined include a deep dive technical report on TEEs to be prepared by participating professors and presented at a 2025 Innovation Summit roundtable, a forthcoming paper on joint supervisory data analysis using encryption technologies to enable cross-authority collaboration, and planned additional seminars for central bank governors on AI, distributed systems and DeFi.
Bank for International Settlements - Innovation Hub 2025-09-05
Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub publishes report from its first academia workshop on emerging financial system technologies
The Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub published its 2025 Academia Workshop Report on applying advanced technologies in finance, covering artificial intelligence, interoperability, privacy-enhancing technologies, trusted execution environments, digital identity, decentralised finance and scalable distributed systems. Key insights address the economic impact and cyber risks of large language models, legal and governance barriers to interoperability, scalability limits of privacy-enhancing technologies, the role of central banks in digital identity, and compliance challenges in permissionless decentralised finance. Next steps include a technical report on trusted execution environments, a paper on encrypted joint supervisory data analysis, and further seminars for central bank governors.