The role of Currency Issue Director is great preparation for high office in a central bank. Ask Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, or Michelle Bullock, soon to be Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, both of whom have managed currency in their banks. What makes it such good preparation?

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, ‘big data’ and ChatGPT have now reached the public consciousness in a big way, hence headlines such as ‘Central Bank of Ireland blocks ChatGPT for staff as financial services firms grapple with AI’ and ‘China’s Central Bank Warns Against ChatGPT ‘Data Leaks’.

The European Money and Finance Forum has recently published a useful paper on big data and machine learning in central banks.

Sir Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Director Financial Stability at the Bank of England, has spoken about innovation in payments and money, focusing on the impact and opportunities offered by tokenisation, including the future of cash.

Danmarks Nationalbank held a conference on 9 March in Copenhagen that looked at crypto assets and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), and then Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).

The Bank of England published in its quarterly bulleting an update on cash. The headlines were that cash has made a partial recovery.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has published an article discussing access to cash in the euro area. It examines the challenges of distance, capacity and public perception and different approaches to modelling them.

The Bank of England has issued its climate related financial disclosure document for 2022, which builds on the significant progress made in 2021.

The Central Bank of Nigeria is planning to introduce Bank Neutral Cash Hubs. It has issued a consultation paper en route to issuing final guidelines, and the draft proposals lay out the CBN’s vision and intentions.

Seigniorage income has long been a central bank source of finance which, if allowed to be retained, means central banks do not require direct funding from the government of the day in their country.