Global money still moves across borders with frictions that feel out of step with real-time commerce, and the next chapter at the BIS Innovation Hub will test whether policy-guided tokenization can finally cut through those seams. A leadership handover is underway: Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, a seasoned IMF executive on payments, currencies, and digital money, has been tapped to lead the Hub beginning March 1, 2026, for a five-year term. He succeeds Cecilia Skingsley, whose tenure pushed flagship experiments into the mainstream, notably Project Agorá’s tokenized cross-border proofs and Project Nexus’s scheme for linking instant payment systems. Until the transition, BIS Deputy General Manager Andréa Maechler is serving as acting head. Beyond personnel, a deeper question looms: can the Hub’s public-private model scale interoperability across jurisdictions without fragmenting standards or duplicating rails already in flight?
A leadership shift with policy depth
Mancini-Griffoli arrives with a profile rare in central bank tech circles: IMF stewardship of digital money coordination, earlier stints at Goldman Sachs and BCG, and experience advising the Swiss National Bank. That blend suggests continuity with a twist—practical market literacy married to policy discipline. Under Skingsley, the Hub proved it could convene big banks, large FMIs, and central banks around shared prototypes. Now the agenda tilts toward deployment pathways where legal, supervisory, and commercial realities matter as much as code. Agorá’s work on tokenized deposits and shared ledgers points to settlement models that bridge private balance sheets and public oversight. Nexus shows another path: interoperating domestic instant rails rather than rebuilding them. Both lines benefit from governance clarity, liability mapping, and risk controls that a policy-native leader can bring to the table.
What success would require next
The yardstick shifted from showcase pilots to credible routes for production-grade adoption, and the Hub’s next steps hinged on three moves. First, codifying interoperability rules—identity, messaging, liquidity, and compliance—so that tokenized assets and account-based payments can co-exist without duplicative onboarding or screening. Second, translating proofs into minimum viable frameworks that supervisors across regions can adopt consistently, reducing regulatory arbitrage and onboarding fatigue for banks and fintechs. Third, strengthening public-private operating models that assign responsibilities for settlement finality, dispute resolution, and cross-jurisdiction risk. With seven centers established since 2019, the Hub already anchored applied experimentation; under new leadership, it positioned these building blocks to migrate into standards workstreams, vendor ecosystems, and bilateral corridors, making tokenized finance a tool rather than a spectacle.
