Speaking at a symposium in Frankfurt am Main, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said an official farewell to Claudia Buch and Joachim Wuermeling following their departure from the Executive Board. Claudia Buch had been Vice-President of the Bundesbank since 2014, before becoming the new Chair of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Supervisory Board at the beginning of 2024. Joachim Wuermeling left the Bundesbank at the end of 2023. In his speech, the Bundesbank President paid tribute to the work of the two former Executive Board members.

Work relating to the financial system

Claudia Buch helped make the financial system more stable and the Bundesbank fitter for the future, Mr Nagel said in his speech, before wishing her all the best in her next role as Chair of the ECB’s Supervisory Board. 

During her time in office, Ms Buch had worked to establish better conditions for policy evaluation in the field of financial stability and had pushed for European cooperation. One of her particular aims had been to create a solid foundation for conducting data-driven work in an optimal way at the Bundesbank. Amongst other things, this involved setting up the Bundesbank’s Research Data and Service Centre (RDSC), which Ms Buch initiated. But the successful restructuring of the Directorate General Statistics, which is now set up in alignment with the key processes required for the efficient production and provision of data, was also thanks to the former Vice-President. Ms Buch’s work also focused on innovations in the financial sector and their potential implications for financial stability.

Driver of a digital agenda

In his speech, Mr Nagel also commended the work of Joachim Wuermeling, who was a strong advocate for innovation and digitalisation at the Bundesbank and in banking supervision. The digital agenda for banking supervision in Germany, for which the former Executive Board member was a driving force, was designed to improve the delivery of data to supervisory authorities and enhance how these data are linked and analysed. With this digital agenda, Mr Wuermeling sought to enhance supervisors’ analytical capabilities and the overall supervisory process, Mr Nagel explained. It was thanks not least to Mr Wuermeling’s commitment to cooperation and digitalisation that the digital agenda for banking supervision was created jointly with BaFin. He also pushed for a digital agenda within the Bundesbank. Together with former Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, he chaired the first committee within the Bundesbank tasked with shaping and accelerating the digital transformation of the Bank as a whole. In addition, Mr Wuermeling drove the establishment of the InnoWerk at the Bundesbank, promoted various partnerships with innovative financial ecosystems, and was involved in the opening of the BIS Innovation Hub Eurosystem Centre in Frankfurt am Main and Paris. 

Panel discussions with Ms Buch and Mr Wuermeling 

After Mr Nagel’s speech, Claudia Buch introduced a panel on the topic “Digital finance: Does it change the trade-off between risk and resilience?”. In it, she discussed how digitalisation affects this trade-off together with Benoît Cœuré, former member of the ECB’s Executive Board, Stefan Ingves, former President of Sveriges Riksbank, and Tokiko Shimizu, an Executive Director at the Bank of Japan.

A second panel moderated by Joachim Wuermeling focused on the digital euro and whether it can serve as a new anchor for stability in Europe. The panellists were Jürgen Bott, Professor at the University of Kaiserslautern, and Fritzi Köhler-Geib, Chief Economist at KfW Group.