To continue robustly advocating for independent, stability-oriented monetary policy, one of our aims is to strengthen our analytical capabilities across business units, including, in particular, in the areas of climate change, digitalisation, central bank digital currency and the low interest rate environment, as well as price formation processes and property prices. Communication aimed at specific target groups will also make a significant contribution to anchoring our stance in the public sphere and the political and economic arenas.

This overall Bank objective focuses on our role as a strong partner in the Eurosystem and the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). We want to play an active part in shaping its future, thereby continuing to foster our employees’ sense of identification with the objectives of the Eurosystem and the SSM, and swiftly communicate Bank-wide positions to the Eurosystem and the SSM. In addition, we seek to advance innovative payment solutions (especially in the area of central bank digital currency) and to ensure that the principle of symmetric data access is taken into account in the ESCB.

We want to enhance the range of services we provide to our fiscal agent customers in view of our statutory mandate, thereby continuing to leverage the opportunities offered by digitalisation in a targeted manner. To do so, we aim to expand the options for integrating sustainability aspects into the investments we make on behalf of our customers and those which they seek out, for example. Another focal point of this overall Bank objective is counteracting demographic change, which we aim to achieve by being perceived internally and externally as an attractive employer which expects high standards of performance and promotes the strengths and potential of all its employees through innovative working conditions and suitable incentives. In keeping with this, we embrace a corporate culture characterised by diversity, cooperation, respect and dialogue.

The challenges posed by digitalisation are very heavily reflected in this overall Bank objective. In order to overcome them, we have developed a digital agenda which is to be implemented further in this strategy cycle. We intend to redesign a large number of our processes with the aim of pursuing a digital user-centric approach – a prerequisite of increasing digitalisation. We want to make our full data potential usable throughout the Bank – assisted by digital innovations – so as to better fulfil our mandate. To do this, we are focusing the development and training of our employees on the needs of a knowledge-based organisation that is facing digital and demographic change. The Bank’s digital transformation will be based on modernising its portfolio of IT products and services and systematically gearing it to the technological market and security standards.