Reserve Bank of India Governor Joins WEF Task Force

Raghuram Rajan, the Governor of India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India will be joining a new task force set up by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to study the future of the global financial system. The task force comprises prominent members of the global financial community and includes well known bankers and policymakers.

Geneva-based non-profit group WEF announced the formation of this special task force at its recently concluded annual meeting held in Davos.

The task force was created at the request of Klaus Schwab, WEF’s Founder and Executive Chairman and Mark Carney, Bank of England Governor and Financial Stability Board Chairman. Carney has confirmed that he will be joining the task force.

The WEF stated that the task force would be focusing on emerging market economies, the economic cost-benefit of post-crisis regulatory reform and technology-enabled innovation.

Other themes that the forum intends to study include loss of trust in financial services and are regulatory and monetary policies. The task force also plans to release recommendations to address major transformative forces influencing the future of global finance and economics after analyzing them.

Apart from Carney and Rajan, Min Zhu, Deputy Managing Director at IMF, Liu Mingkang, Distinguished Research Fellow in Global Economics and Finance at Chinese University of Hong Kong will also be part of the task force to bring in different perspectives of all policymakers. Heads of major financial organizations including Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat, BlackRock Chairman and CEO Laurence Fink, HSBC Chairman Douglas Flint and Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan will also be a part of the task force.

The task force met for the first time at the WEF Annual Meeting last week in Davos. A comprehensive set of recommendations and actions is expected to be released during the next WEF Annual Meeting to be held in Geneva in January 2017. According to Giancarlo Bruno, WEF Managing Director, the timing of the task force’s creation was in keeping with the WEF’s focus on the Fourth Industrial revolution this year.

World Economic Forum (WEF) has defined Fourth Industrial Revolution as the notion that technological advances will enable increasing automation and transform the global economy in significant ways. Carney has stated that the task force will examine the impact of innovations on stability of financial systems and also its role as an “engine of growth”.

Carney also chairs the G20’s Financial Stability Board which develops and coordinates regulation for key financial centres worldwide, making it likely that the recommendations of the task force will be taken seriously by world leaders.

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