Central Banking Awards 2025: second group of winners unveiled

Tobias Adrian, Nina Boyarchenko and Domenico Giannone have won this year’s Economics in central banking award, part of the second group of Central Banking Awards 2025 winners, unveiled today (March 13).

Other winners include the Bank of Portugal for transparency, the Reserve Bank of India for its digital transformation and the Bank of Israel for its communications initiative. Swift wins the partner initiative award, FTS the regulatory technology services award, and SecAlliance the cyber security initiative award.

Central Banking will publish two more tranches of awards in the coming days, on March 18 and 20.

Economics in central banking: Adrian, Boyarchenko and Giannone began developing the growth-at-risk framework in the 2010s while at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as a means of forecasting the whole distribution of future outcomes, not just the most likely outcome. Since then, the framework has been deployed in a host of policy settings, by monetary and macro-prudential policy-makers, to assess the risk profile of different policy choices.

Growth-at-risk and other at-risk frameworks based on the same methodology have given central banks crucial tools for dealing with today’s high levels of uncertainty. Adrian and Giannone have since taken the work further as part of the International Monetary Fund’s efforts to create an integrated policy framework, while Boyarchenko continues to work on at-risk modelling at the New York Fed.

“I am delighted to see Tobias Adrian and colleagues recognised with Central Banking’s Economics in Central Banking Award 2025 for their groundbreaking work on growth-at-risk,” says IMF first deputy managing director Gita Gopinath. “This joint research, together with the US Federal Reserve, has helped transform how we seek to understand macro-financial interactions; emphasising the asymmetric risks financial conditions impose on future economic growth.”

Gopinath adds that by “bringing an empirical foundation to risk assessment”, the economists have “advanced economic forecasting and provided policy-makers with a powerful framework to navigate financial stability and macroeconomic policy in an integrated way”.

Kartik Athreya, director of research at the New York Fed, says Adrian, Boyarchenko and Giannone have “sharpened our entire profession’s views” on how financial conditions shape real economic activity. “We at the New York Fed, and the Federal Reserve System, have used these insights in our discussions of monetary policy. So, it is a delight to see this community of expert practitioners recognise Nina’s work,” he adds.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, economic counsellor and director of research at the IMF, adds: “Domenico Giannone’s work on growth-at-risk has been instrumental in shaping how we think about the links between financial conditions and economic volatility. This research has provided policy-makers with a deeper understanding of downside risks, and helped sharpen policy discussions. This recognition reflects the profound influence that Domenico and his colleagues have had on central banks policy-making, an influence that is likely to grow as central bankers need to navigate an increasingly complex global economy.”

Transparency: The Bank of Portugal’s first website overhaul in seven years has boosted the site’s appeal, while adding new content, improving usability and increasing interoperability with social media channels.

The bank has also launched economic and financial literacy campaigns across social media and produced engaging videos to enhance internal communications.

Mário Centeno, governor of the Bank of Portugal, says transparency is “more than a principle. It’s our way of building trust and strengthening our relationship with the public. This award is a confirmation of this commitment. Engaging with civil society is a priority for me. We can only be credible if our objectives are truly understood by the people we serve.”

Digital transformation: The RBI has executed an ambitious programme of digital change through the launch of its Sarthi and Pravaah systems. Workflows that previously relied on paper-based and manual processes are now digitised, with tracking tools and integrated cyber security.

Throughout the upgrade process, the IT team worked closely with staff to ensure the tools were designed to meet business needs, and to make sure staff understood and used the tools when they were rolled out.

“Sarthi and Pravaah reflect RBI’s commitment to foster a seamless technology-driven financial ecosystem,” says governor Sanjay Malhotra. “These transformative initiatives involving process re-engineering will promote ease-of-doing business, increase transparency, enhance efficiency, improve accountability and strengthen the confidence of citizens in the central bank.”

Communications initiative: The Bank of Israel has increased the power of consumers of banking services by rolling out a series of dashboards that allow people to compare at a glance the products offered by different banks.

Despite the operational challenges posed by the conflict in Gaza, the central bank managed to continue its consumer protection efforts and rolled out new dashboards in late 2024.

Governor Amir Yaron says the award reflects the bank’s “innovative initiatives”. He adds: “The publication of comparative information helps to empower customers and enables them to make informed decisions after examining comprehensive data in a simple, accessible and convenient manner, thereby enhancing competition in the banking system.”

Partner initiative: Swift has played a central role in global efforts to develop central bank digital currencies and a tokenised payments network.

Swift brought together more than 10 central banks in 2024 as part of exploratory CBDC work, connecting the European Central Bank, Banque de France and Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s wholesale CBDC systems to achieve foreign exchange settlement.

“This award reflects our dedication to advancing digital currency and tokenisation interoperability globally, reinforcing our commitment to industry-wide collaboration,” says Nick Kerigan, managing director and head of innovation at Swift. “By working closely with central banks and financial institutions, we are shaping the future of cross-border transactions.”

Regulatory technology services: FTS’s Strix platform has enhanced risk assessment capabilities across the banking, payments and remittance, money exchange and virtual asset sectors.

The company has also helped central banks step up their work with data, allowing for greater precision in detecting and understanding anti-money laundering (AML) risks. Strix enables central banks to streamline data collection and analysis, helping them cope with growing AML data volumes. Users say the platform has helped them detect risks even at smaller and lower-risk entities.

“Having invested specifically in reusable technology for banking supervisors for years, the benefits of Cots [commercial off-the-shelf systems] are being actively and tangibly realised by Strix users,” says Garrett Storm Dunker, chief executive of FTS.

Cyber security initiative: SecAlliance has been working with central banks to develop cyber resilience in their respective financial sectors. The firm’s intelligence services are founded on information provided by a network of specialists, including through regular geopolitical risk assessments.

Central bank users said the company’s ThreatMatch portal was a user-friendly means of gathering high-quality threat intelligence.

Rob Darnell, chief executive of SecAlliance, says: “Keeping societies safe is at the heart of what we do. To achieve this, we work hard with central banks and governments to build intelligence-sharing and testing programmes to drive national resilience.”