The National Cash Forum has been established on the initiative of the Bundesbank, the being, as Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz put it, to preserve cash as an efficient and widely used means of payment in a changing payment landscape. The forum will facilitate close dialogue between the associations of the banking industry, retail trade, consumer protection, the CIT industry, vending machine operators and the Bundesbank. The industry is set to meet here at least once a year. 

Climate change poses huge challenges for the financial sector, too. The Bundesbank supports the transition to a low-carbon economy.

An artificial intelligence (AI) application developed by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and its project partners, the Bank of Spain, the Deutsche Bundesbank and the European Central Bank, enables analysis of climate-related risks in the financial system.

“Over time, the IMF has repeatedly managed to emerge stronger from crises. However, the external circumstances have rarely been more challenging than they are today,” Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner and Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel write in a guest article at Handelsblatt. “An IMF that focuses on its core mandate is best placed to strengthen the global economic and monetary system,” they explain in a contribution to mark the IMF’s 80th anniversary. 

The turn of the year saw Executive Board member Sabine Mauderer take office as Chair of the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a global group of central banks and supervisory authorities committed to forging a more sustainable financial system. The NGFS’s mission is to analyse what climate change and nature loss mean for the financial system

German economic output probably declined somewhat in the final quarter of 2023, according to the January Monthly Report. Weak foreign demand continued to put a strain on industry and higher financing costs were still dampening investment. Uncertainty about the future direction of fiscal and climate policy is also likely to have weighed on economic activity, Bundesbank economists report. Moreover, consumers remained cautious and are unlikely to have increased their consumption by much.