Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli: will start at Switzerland-headquartered BIS in March 2026 | Credit: BIS (both images)

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has today announced the appointment of Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli as head of the BIS Innovation Hub with effect from 1 March 2026.

Mancini-Griffoli is currently assistant director in the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department, responsible for payments, currencies and financial market infrastructures. He joined the Washington DC-headquartered organisation in 2011.

His new role is for a five-year term at the Switzerland-headquartered BIS, where he will be a member of the executive committee. He succeeds Cecilia Skingsley who left earlier this year for a job in her native Sweden.

BIS established the Innovation Hub in 2019 to identify and develop insights into fintech trends, explore the development of tools to improve the functioning of the global financial system and become a focal point for central bank experts.

Its fifth annual work programme, announced in January, spans activity across the Innovation Hub’s seven locations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Frankfurt/Paris (Eurosystem centre), London, Stockholm (Nordics centre), Toronto (Canada) and its ‘home’ nation Switzerland. At the time of the work programme’s announcement, 26 projects in total were currently underway, with 31 completed. The 2025 work programme ‘reflect[ed] the start of a more mature phase of the Innovation Hub’ as it enters its sixth year, the BIS stated.

RELATED ARTICLE AI tools for financial supervision and green finance among BIS’s 2025 priorities – a news story (15 January 2025) on highlights of the BIS Innovation Hub’s current work programme

‘Foster international collaboration’

In its announcement of his appointment (25 November), the BIS said that Mancini-Griffoli would lead the BIS Innovation Hub ‘in its mission to foster international collaboration among central banks on innovative financial technology’.

Mancini-Griffoli is currently chair of the IMF coordination group on digital money and represents the IMF in international forums. Before moving to the IMF, he was a senior economist advising the board of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) on monetary policy. He previously held roles in the private sector at Goldman Sachs, Boston Consulting Group and a technology start-up in Silicon Valley.

Skingsley started at the BIS for what was envisaged as a five-year term in September 2022, joining from Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank). She left the BIS to become county governor of the County Administrative Board of Stockholm, starting her new position in June.

Since Skingsley’s departure the Innovation Hub has been led by deputy general manager, Andréa Maechler. Maechler moved to the BIS in September 2023, having herself previously worked for the SNB and IMF. Maechler will remain acting Innovation Hub head until Mancini-Griffoli starts.

The BIS welcomed a new general manager (for the overall organisation) earlier this year. Pablo Hernández de Cos, who was governor of the Bank of Spain from 2018 until June 2024, started a five-year term in BIS’s top job on 1 July, succeeding Agustín Carstens.

The IMF recently recruited Carlos Brandt to the role of senior financial sector expert. He joined from Banco Central do Brazil, where he worked for more than two decades working on initiatives, including – in recent years – on instant payments platform Pix.