1 Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure and a privilege to open this year's Bundesbank symposium on "Banking supervision in dialogue" and to welcome you all to this event. Last year's symposium fell victim to the pandemic and couldn't take place in person. So instead we organised a digital conference that showed how rewarding remote interaction can be. And it also provided the blueprint for our symposium today.

However, the pandemic is influencing more than just the manner in which we run our symposiums. It's safe to say that COVID-19 will increase the pace of digital transformation at a more universal level, not least in the banking sector. After all, the financial industry has been a frontrunner for quite some time now when it comes to deploying digital technologies.

All the way back in 1972, a UK bank installed a device known as the IBM 2984. This cashpoint, as it was called, was a precursor of the automated teller machines we know today. With their direct network connections to bank customers' accounts, ATMs were the first computer terminals that the general public were able to operate. It would be nearly four more years before the US company Apple unveiled the first personal computer.

(Full text available at BIS，03 September 2021)