Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to HSBC Global Viewpoint, the podcast series that brings together business leaders and industry experts to explore the latest global insights, trends, and opportunities.
Speaker: Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
Speaker: And now onto today's show.
Speaker: Welcome to TMI's TreasuryCast and HSBC's Cyboss Spotlight.
Speaker: I'm Eleanor Hill, Editor of TMI, and I'm delighted to be working with HSBC to bring you an in-depth look at the events from this year's Cyboss.
Speaker: Throughout this series, we will explore the critical topics impacting the transaction banking landscape, specifically looking at sustainability, digitization, and innovation.
Speaker: We will examine the opportunities and challenges disrupting the areas of payments, trade, custody, and traditional business models.
Speaker: So we have a really fascinating topic for you today, namely CBDCs.
Speaker: And we have two experts here to help us navigate this up and coming area.
Speaker: They are Mark Williamson, who's Managing Director, Global Head of Ethics, Partnerships and Propositions at HSBC, who some of you may recognize from our 2021 Cyboss podcast, during which we covered the basics of CBDCs.
Speaker: So Mark, great to have you back with us.
Speaker: And Mark is also joined by none other than Soren Mortensen, who is Director, Global Financial Markets Transformation at IBM.
Speaker: And Mark and Soren have been working closely together on a joint project with the Banque de France, which we'll get into shortly.
Speaker: But I think first of all, guys, it would be great if we could just set the scene a little bit for this podcast.
Speaker: So I mentioned, Mark, that we spoke last year.
Speaker: We did a kind of intro session
Speaker: session around CBDCs, etc.
Speaker: But how much progress do you think has been made in those 12 months in terms of the general awareness around CBDCs?
Speaker: You know, where do you feel people still have misconceptions, maybe gaps in their knowledge, etc?
Speaker: Well, firstly, thank you very much, Eleanor, for hosting this podcast.
Speaker: It's great to be back and talking about central bank digital currencies again.
Speaker: And really pleased to be joined by Soren, who's my partner in innovation and all things CBDC.
Speaker: So really looking forward to this particular podcast.
Speaker: In answer to your question around how much progress has been made around the awareness of CBDCs in the last 12 months, I think the awareness has grown.
Speaker: I think people are now familiar with what CBDC stands for.
Speaker: So again, you know, 12, 18 months ago, maybe that wasn't the case, but people know that it stands for central bank digital currencies.
Speaker: And also aware that there's differences in approach and types of central bank digital currencies, so whether that's wholesale, retail, token-based, account-based, domestic and cross-border.
Speaker: So there's certainly been a great amount of awareness and research and experiments and knowledge that has increased over the last 12 months is my observation.
Speaker: I think there's also due to that, some of the misconceptions is where is the starting point for CBDCs?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So typically we see that some countries are starting at domestic and looking at retail.
Speaker: It's typically emerging countries, so the Bahamas, for example, who are looking at how can I serve the unbanked or underbanked within that particular economy and looking at how do I launch a retail CBDC?
Speaker: Whereas with more advanced countries, more modern countries, we're seeing that the focus is around wholesale.
Speaker: So we're seeing a lot of projects around wholesale CBDC and what that looks like for starting the journey with central bank digital currencies into that economy.
Speaker: And therefore, you look at that across the globe, you have some misconceptions around where is the best place to start.
Speaker: And we're certainly seeing that across the board.
Speaker: Soren, do you want to pick up on some of the points there?
Speaker: Yeah, thank you, Mark.
Speaker: And thank you, Anna-Laura, for inviting me to this podcast.
Speaker: Certainly what we have observed is that most central banks are experimenting on CDBC.
Speaker: That's in excess of 85% of all the global central banks.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And most of these projects are on retail CDBCs, basically echoing what Mark is saying, that most small economies will explore retail CDBC.
Speaker: However, wholesale CDBC projects,
Speaker: have progressed further.
Speaker: And these are projects that are being done in the more industrialized countries.
Speaker: And whilst they're less than 20% of all the CDBC initiatives, they have progressed much, much further than the retail CDBC projects at this point of time.
Speaker: And what we are going to be talking about here today is around the wholesale side, because that is a reflection of the trend.
Speaker: That said, many central banks are working on the retail CWCs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: OK, interesting.
Speaker: So, yeah, an awful lot's happened really in the last 12 months.
Speaker: And like you say, a lot more awareness, but also a lot more action by the sounds of things, which is great.
Speaker: Mark, you gave an example or two before, but I'm just wondering in terms of the central banks activity and their development of CBDCs.
Speaker: Have there been any pilots or advancements recently that have really caught your eye that you've gone, oh, okay, this is getting really interesting.
Speaker: Is there anything you'd single out?
Speaker: Well, I'd like to single out the experiment we did with IBM because I think that still stands up very strongly against what's been going on this year.
Speaker: I think other than the great experience we did with Banque de France and IBM, what's been interesting is seeing some of the emerging countries launching CBDC projects and pilots.
Speaker: And also China still is progressing with their CBDC distribution into retail.
Speaker: So we're certainly seeing that.
Speaker: And they're looking at beyond lottery, they're looking at using it for public transport and also potentially putting that into supply chains and by providing loans to building companies and then the building companies will then pay their supplies in CBDC.
Speaker: So it's still going through that process of looking at,
Speaker: Okay, we've got a base CBDC product.
Speaker: We've got millions of wallets out there.
Speaker: We've distributed billions of dollars and digital yuan into the economy.
Speaker: and looking at what are the further use cases of extending that into the broader population.
Speaker: So we're seeing those sorts of advancements.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I know a couple of treasuries who are keeping a very close eye on the China side of things.
Speaker: Soren, anything you've seen?
Speaker: Well, I totally echo what Mark is saying.
Speaker: But I would also say that many of the projects are bound by secrecy because many of the central banks are
Speaker: want to progress their project before they announce what they're doing to the market.
Speaker: So I would say in general, the market is much more progressed than what's in the public eye at this point in time.
Speaker: But we can't share that because it's both Mark and I are bound by secrecy with some central banks.
Speaker: So it is something that the central banks are taking seriously.
Speaker: It is something that the governments, even in Western countries, are taking seriously.
Speaker: And the governments are really trying to see how this can progress and really work on the value propositions for the CDBC within their jurisdictions.
Speaker: So we see a lot of work being done on this.
Speaker: For me personally, I see the time frame for something becoming more real, getting shorter and shorter.
Speaker: I think there's a number of submarine projects out there.
Speaker: It's just when those submarines are going to pop up and the timeframes for them to go into production will be...
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I've got visions of you both in some kind of James Bond film centred around CBDCs now, but anyway.
Speaker: Naturally.
Speaker: You look at Soren and I, of course you'd be thinking of James Bond.
Speaker: I can see that.
Speaker: Great stuff.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: We've teased the audience a little bit with your joint project with the Banque de France.
Speaker: So come on, let's get into it.
Speaker: Let's hear a little bit more about it.
Speaker: So Mark, tell us about this project.
Speaker: You know, it's designed...
Speaker: with HSBC partnering with Vonderhorsen and IBM, but sort of designed to show how CBDCs can cross every divide.
Speaker: So it's cross-border, cross-digital and real-world currency, cross-asset, cross-ledger.
Speaker: Go on, give us the lowdown.
Speaker: Tell us about what's been achieved so far.
Speaker: Happy to.
Speaker: So if you remember last year when we were talking about this and we were talking about how do we solve the Rubik's Cube of CBDC, how do we solve for wholesale, retail, token-based, account-based, domestic and cross-border?
Speaker: And given the wholesale focus that we have, and I sit within markets, so wholesale is important, we wanted to come up with a use case that satisfied solving the Rubik's Cube and also was relevant to wholesale markets.
Speaker: And also importantly, be relevant for that really important connectivity between central banks and commercial banks, because that first connectivity, that first link in the chain is really, really important.
Speaker: So the experiment that we did, and I'll go through this very slowly because I think it's worth taking time going through it, is that we worked with Banque de France and IBM.
Speaker: And on day one, Banque de France issued a Euro CBDC bond.
Speaker: And that's in the primary market.
Speaker: HSBC then brought that CBDC bond.
Speaker: We then put that into our digital vault.
Speaker: So we stored that into our digital vaults.
Speaker: And then we sold that in the secondary market to one of our clients.
Speaker: And so we've gone through primary and secondary market.
Speaker: We've purchased the bond.
Speaker: We've put it into the digital vault.
Speaker: We then rolled forward that experiment one day and we received a coupon payment from Bonk de France.
Speaker: And then we, per our client's standard settlement instructions, we converted the coupon CBDC amount into a synthetic CBDC,
Speaker: and paid it into their retail bank account.
Speaker: So again, if we rewind a little bit and think about what we were trying to achieve there, we looked at wholesale, retail, token-based, account-based, domestic, and cross-border.
Speaker: And also, from a market perspective, from a wholesale perspective, we're looking at primary, secondary market, and into foreign exchange.
Speaker: Now,
Speaker: I'll let Soren talk about the really cool stuff between the two different blockchains because the interoperability between the two different blockchains was super important because one of the big challenges that we foresee across solving that Rubik's Cube 64 times across the globe is going to be the interoperability between the different technologies that are going to be implemented.
Speaker: So to do that across IBM's Hyperledger and across R3 Corda,
Speaker: using the Weaver protocol in between was also an additional challenge that we gave ourselves and we met.
Speaker: So, Soren, do you want to talk a little bit about the technology side of things?
Speaker: Sure, Mark.
Speaker: Interoperability between networks is key, and it's key to successful for CDBCs in general.
Speaker: And what we set out to do from a technology perspective and the challenge that we gave to the team was we had also together with HSBC and Bonne-de-France and a whole wide range of other banks developed the platform to issue, trade and settle securities on blockchain against CDBC.
Speaker: And that's subject to another experimentation where there was a white paper that came out last year in October.
Speaker: We leveraged that platform, but the challenge that the team was given was we want to have interoperability across networks that are built on different technologies.
Speaker: So across networks, across technologies, across time zones, and as Mark highlighted, token-based, account-based, and what have you.
Speaker: We achieved that on this project where we had the interoperability not only with blockchain networks, so Mark highlighted R3 and Hyperledger Fabric, but we also connected to the traditional networks so that we could exchange data between these networks.
Speaker: Another thing that we set out to do was to ensure that the issuing central bank that issues the CDBC has full visibility of their currency in circulation across all of these networks.
Speaker: And this is why this project is so important.
Speaker: Because unlike many other projects that looks at interoperability between two networks with the same underlying technology, here we have gone completely beyond everything.
Speaker: And both the traditional networks, the new types of networks.
Speaker: And through that technology, the IBM Weaver, which is, by the way, now open sourced, we have proven together with HSBC that we can have these payments cross-boulder, cross-network,
Speaker: cross time zone, cross technologies, pretty much cross everything, and still have the central bank having full visibility of the movement of their currency.
Speaker: And that's why it's so hugely important because it will give the flexibility for CDBCs in the future to basically operate on any platform that they want, yeah?
Speaker: While keeping that control.
Speaker: And that's why this is so important.
Speaker: great stuff so sort of laying the groundwork and opening the door for many things in the future and like you say there's there's interoperability and there's interoperability uh kind of underlying bold capital letters and you're very much at the the latter stage uh with that one so it's great to hear a little bit about the techie side of things i'm just wondering if we can get into maybe a bit of more detail around the testing uh that you did because i'm sure our audience would be interested in that so mark
Speaker: How do you actually go about testing that full front to back life cycle from the bond issuance that you mentioned through to that foreign currency coupon payment?
Speaker: What's been the process there?
Speaker: So a lot of coordination, a lot of late nights, a lot of coffee, a lot of strong coffee and some very committed and diligent technology teams that were committed to the cause, which was super helpful.
Speaker: But to answer the question, the process was that we had to set up the environments between the different systems.
Speaker: And as Sauron was talking about, we need to connect into traditional systems plus the newer DLT or blockchain-based systems.
Speaker: So we had to set that up.
Speaker: We had to have a separate environment to do that.
Speaker: We also allowed ourselves quite a bit of time to do it.
Speaker: But what was interesting, and what I mean by that, is that Bonk de France were expecting us to take several days to go through this particular experiment.
Speaker: But actually, when we plugged everything together and the way that we had coded it and the interoperability between the different systems enabled us to do it within a matter of hours instead of days.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: because it was connected and because it worked so seamlessly with all the hard work of her developers and technologists and architects and the teams around the globe to do it.
Speaker: It was very good to actually see it in action because there's a lot of hyperbole, there's a lot of documents that can be written, but
Speaker: To actually see it live and see it operating and to see the tokens move across the system, to see the payments move across the system and be surfaced in different GUIs, etc., was hugely impressive.
Speaker: So that was the...
Speaker: the way that we did it.
Speaker: And what was key to that was not only the underlying technology, but actually surfacing the movement of the bond and the token and the payments through GUIs that we had between the two different systems.
Speaker: Great stuff.
Speaker: Well, it must have been so satisfying as well to sort of have had that couple of days window available and then only needing a couple of hours because it all works so seamlessly.
Speaker: Oh, great stuff.
Speaker: Soren, anything you wanted to add on that?
Speaker: Yes, what I would add to that is the collaboration between the teams.
Speaker: how well when you are innovating and you're challenging all three organizations, Bank de France, HSBC and IBM, how well the teams came together.
Speaker: So we have Mark and his teams leading the overall project supported by IBM and Bank de France, IBM more on the technical side.
Speaker: But the way the teams work together, although they were challenged to the extreme, was very, very impressive.
Speaker: I mean, that's gratitude to HSBC project leadership for Mark's team.
Speaker: But I was really impressed how well they work together.
Speaker: And the success of this project is down to that collaboration as well.
Speaker: Yeah, always so important.
Speaker: You mentioned this and the successes, but I have to ask, were there any particular challenges along the way?
Speaker: Obviously, we spoke about the interoperability and that was a challenge to overcome.
Speaker: Anything else you'd highlight?
Speaker: I think given the innovation and collaboration is super important, that comes with opportunities and some threats or opportunities and things that need to be managed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because we're breaking new ground, because you're testing technologies to the limit and you're testing new paradigms and the use of these technologies, that's where some of the challenges came across.
Speaker: And so you come across these really gnarly problems that haven't been solved before and getting together and working out how do I solve those challenges of moving tokens between two different blockchains, for example.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: was challenging, but hugely rewarding once it's been achieved.
Speaker: And that took some of the best and brightest minds within IBM and HSBC and Bonk de France to really nut through and work through how are we going to solve for this problem?
Speaker: You know, what are we seeing?
Speaker: How do we achieve the objective that we'd set out to achieve?
Speaker: And what was interesting there was that not only was it three different organizations, it was different development teams across different geographies.
Speaker: So we've got a team in India that were
Speaker: developing this, there's teams in Europe, et cetera.
Speaker: So we're really trying to pull together not only the three different organizations, the different time zones that we're testing across and technologies.
Speaker: They were some of the challenges that we saw.
Speaker: And key to any good collaboration is that honest and transparent feedback and doing that feedback loop and making sure that's constant and just keep grinding through
Speaker: to getting to the end goal.
Speaker: But yes, there were some challenges.
Speaker: It wasn't all cartwheels and laughter.
Speaker: There was some stuff that we had to work through.
Speaker: Okay, understood.
Speaker: Soren, anything, any particular challenge you'd highlight or just echo what Mark had said?
Speaker: All projects have challenges, but I think one of the things that we did to mitigate the challenges was to set out the use cases and set out the clarity of the use cases that we wanted to test up front and share that with the whole team.
Speaker: Yes, we were pushing the boundaries.
Speaker: Yes, we were pushing the teams as far as they could go and the technology.
Speaker: But that clarity and then the transparency of progress, communication between the teams was absolutely essential.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that everybody understood when we hit a niche or a problem that was resolved as part of the team.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Still with clear visibility of what the end goal would be, what we wanted to achieve with that.
Speaker: So I would say, yes, we had some glitches along the way, but I think they were resolved very, very quickly and smoothly through that collaboration of the teams.
Speaker: Yeah, it's always exciting to have a bit of a challenge, isn't it?
Speaker: Let's be honest, you know, keeps you motivated.
Speaker: If we don't have challenges, life would be too boring.
Speaker: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: OK, Mark, one of the other things I wanted to ask you about was the sort of debate that comes up in some of the conversations I have around CBDCs.
Speaker: which is where commercial banks actually fit into the whole model.
Speaker: So bearing in mind this successful experiment that you've done, how does this strengthen the business case for commercial banks to actually be involved in CBDCs?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's worth restating a few goals and objectives of BIS and other central banks.
Speaker: And one of those key objectives is do no harm.
Speaker: And secondly, just to call out that if you look at M0 that's in circulation, it's about 15 to 20% of money that's in circulation.
Speaker: And then 80% is private money.
Speaker: And that's credit creation, typically from commercial banks, and that goes into the retail world.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Again, this, I think, cements the relationship and that really important link that I talked about before between central banks and commercial banks being distributors of commercial bank money.
Speaker: So I think it's helped from that perspective.
Speaker: And the business case is that we are here to create credit.
Speaker: We're here to, we have a license to pay into many different RTGSs or central banks across the globe.
Speaker: And we are here to do the AML, the KYC,
Speaker: to provide mortgages, to provide loans, to provide credit cards, et cetera, right?
Speaker: So that whole credit creation piece is really important.
Speaker: But where it does help strengthen the business case, as the question is outlined here, is looking at how do we improve that link?
Speaker: How do we help accelerate payments and visibility or transparency work for an audit trail between central and commercial banks
Speaker: for the M-Zero or for central bank money.
Speaker: And we see that this has been a really good way to prove out that if you have the right technology, the right transparency workflow and audit trail of where your central bank money is at any time throughout the lifecycle of bond creation through to payment within a retail account, then that can help with things around intraday liquidity and how that's managed between
Speaker: central banks and commercial banks, and also for our clients in moving into corporates and into working capital.
Speaker: Okay, perfect.
Speaker: Sauron, any further thoughts?
Speaker: I hear a debate in the market where people are saying, oh, we don't really think CDBC is going to work because the commercial banks feels that they're going to get disintermediated by the central bank.
Speaker: And my response to that is I'm involved in quite a few CDBC projects.
Speaker: I don't see that message from the central banks.
Speaker: On the contrary, for example, for retail CDBC, the central banks, the projects that we are involved in, all have the commercial banks as a key to distributing the CDBCs.
Speaker: The central bank is just issuing.
Speaker: They are not going to replace the commercial banks.
Speaker: On the contrary.
Speaker: On wholesale, same case.
Speaker: We do see some potential risk to some of the processes currently managed by commercial banks.
Speaker: But what we see is that the central banks are working with the commercial banks to see how we can alleviate this.
Speaker: So I don't see a threat for commercial banks on either retail or wholesale CDBC.
Speaker: On the country, I see the central banks...
Speaker: reinforcing the, as Mark mentioned, the do no harm, or let's not change it, let's leverage what we have.
Speaker: And in there, both on wholesale and on retail CDBC, the commercial banks are critical for the success and the roll-up.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: There's an opportunity and the door is open and it's there.
Speaker: So it's up to the banks to take advantage of that and get involved.
Speaker: But Mark, I wanted to just come back to something you briefly mentioned, our wonderful audience, obviously corporate treasurers.
Speaker: So why are CBDCs sort of strictly relevant for Treasury?
Speaker: Now, obviously, it's good for people to know about it in a wider context of what's going on within the financial world.
Speaker: But how could CBDCs actually potentially benefit Treasury, maybe potentially
Speaker: sort of around liquidity, working capital management, et cetera?
Speaker: Yeah, I think there's a few different aspects to it.
Speaker: Firstly, as touched on, if you have better transparency workflow and audit trail of where your money is throughout the lifecycle of funds being settled...
Speaker: and CBDCs could play a role in that, then that's going to help investment decisions and working capital decisions from corporate treasurers.
Speaker: I think also with the use case that we went through of primary bond issuance and that bond being issued on chain, I think there's a bunch of opportunities around how corporate treasurers have access to that and have visibility around those central bank bonds that have been issued.
Speaker: And that could also lead into different investment decisions around delivery versus payment.
Speaker: And so how that gets sped up because you've got this all on distributed ledger technology.
Speaker: It could also go into fractionalization of those bonds, et cetera, because you have a digital representation of it rather than a paper copy.
Speaker: As we touched on a bit earlier, I think as some of the use cases that have been explored around the globe, the China example that I mentioned,
Speaker: If governments are going to be issuing loans in central bank digital currencies out to different government suppliers, then what does that mean and how do we need to think through that?
Speaker: Ultimately, it's all about how are we looking at different stores and values of payments on distributed ledger technology and blockchain.
Speaker: CBDCs will be part of that ecosystem.
Speaker: They won't be the only one by any stretch of imagination.
Speaker: So corporate treasurers need to be aware that, hey, there's this broader landscape here of different stores of value and payment that I need to be able to process and accept within my risk management systems, my treasury management systems, my enterprise resource platforms.
Speaker: And how am I going to treat those and store them and treat them on my balance sheet?
Speaker: So I think there's a few different aspects there that corporate treasurers need to be aware of.
Speaker: But the key point is that if you do have that better transparency workflow and audit trail of where your money is at any time from time of, say, deal capture to settlement,
Speaker: then that gives you a whole bunch of different decisions that you can make in order to better manage your intraday liquidity, for example.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: Sauron, anything you'd add?
Speaker: Yes, I would add to this.
Speaker: With the interoperability that we have been working on across all networks, all technologies,
Speaker: we're also looking at interoperability into supply chain networks.
Speaker: And certainly getting that interoperability and IBM Weaver is already being a part of our global supply chain networks.
Speaker: You have that interoperability between the payment providers like HSBC and these global supply chain networks
Speaker: where you have opportunity to do financing and payments and so forth.
Speaker: And through this, basically have instantaneous exchange of assets, instantaneous funding, payments, and what have you.
Speaker: So certainly whilst we are looking at CDBC, the opportunities are endless through what we actually proved with HSBC on the new project.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Opportunities are endless.
Speaker: Excellent stuff.
Speaker: That's what we like to hear.
Speaker: So final question before I let you get back to your lives as secret CBDC agents.
Speaker: I'm just wondering, because we've covered a lot of ground in this podcast.
Speaker: So do you have a key takeaway, next step for our listeners, you know,
Speaker: whether they be banks, whether they be treasurers, how can they prepare for this environment where CBDCs are more commonplace?
Speaker: And also wanted to see if I can pin you down on a timescale.
Speaker: I know you've kind of alluded to it, but I'm just wondering if I can get you to be a bit more specific.
Speaker: So I think the way treasurers can be prepared is to, of course, listen to these great podcasts.
Speaker: There's lots of really great research materials out there, whether that's from IBM, from HSBC,
Speaker: From BIS, there's some really good papers out there.
Speaker: So there's lots of research material and also news that comes out on a daily, weekly basis on how the CBDC market is evolving.
Speaker: And it does evolve rapidly, but also slowly at the same time.
Speaker: So whilst there's a lot of research, et cetera, great technology innovation that's going on, it is going to take a little while to actually get into the marketplace.
Speaker: So, you know, be aware, be, you know, keep an eye on how developments are going, keep an eye on how that's going to potentially pass through government and what it means for corporate treasuries who operate globally, because I think that's the other key aspect.
Speaker: If you're operating globally, then you need to be aware of what the developments are and what that means for each of the jurisdictions that you operate in.
Speaker: So I think it's going to take a little while to get out there, whether it's in the next two years, five years, 10 years.
Speaker: You've got to times that for, in HSBC's case, times 64.
Speaker: So just trying to keep abreast of what's going on across all those different countries and jurisdictions is important.
Speaker: why we're excited about doing this particular project, because if we're able to solve that Rubik's cube and then be ready for the different types of CBDC implementations across the globe, that puts us in good stead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Super.
Speaker: And Saren, final thoughts from you?
Speaker: Yes, my final thought is point one, technology is no longer the issue.
Speaker: We have deployed this on the hybrid cloud.
Speaker: We can interoperate with any type of network in any time zone on any type of technology, both new and old technology.
Speaker: So for this, technology is no longer the issue.
Speaker: The issue is how do you roll this out?
Speaker: And the use cases are going to be many.
Speaker: But what we do see is many central banks moving quite fast forward.
Speaker: So my personal view is that we're going to see these types like CBDC being in production more towards the five year mark than the 10 year mark.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's real.
Speaker: It's something that corporate treasurers should think about right now and should engage with innovative banks like HSBC to really understand the implication on their business in more detail.
Speaker: But it's going to happen five years rather than 10 years.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, like you say, it's real.
Speaker: It's certainly coming and preparing now and asking those questions and just laying the ground for what is coming in the future.
Speaker: Well, thank you both ever so much for joining us today.
Speaker: It's been a pleasure to have you with us.
Speaker: It's been great to have you back, Mark, and to hear all about what's gone on in the last 12 months and soren to hear about all of the work that you've done on the project and the interoperability kind of progress that you've achieved.
Speaker: And I do hope we can tempt you both to come back maybe next year and give us an update on what's happened in the meantime.
Speaker: Thank you very much, Eleanor.
Speaker: It's been a pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: Well, thank you all for listening as well.
Speaker: This has been HSBC's Cyboss Spotlight, a podcast miniseries produced especially by TMI for HSBC Global Viewpoint.
Speaker: To discover other episodes in this series, search for HSBC Global Viewpoint on Apple and Spotify or head to gbm.hsbc.com forward slash cybos, where you can also find out more about HSBC's transaction banking insights and presence at Cybos.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us at HSBC Global Viewpoint.
Speaker: We hope you enjoyed the discussion.
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