Federal Reserve Hiring Private Sector Tech Talent In Push to Evolve with Financial System

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell recently said that he wants to put the agency at “the forefront of technological changes” in the financial sector, which is driving the Fed’s efforts to attract top tech talent from the private sector.

During an event hosted by the Bank for International Settlements last month, Powell said that bringing talent from the private to the public sector was necessary to “evolve with the rest of the financial system,” according to American Banker. He noted that the Fed system is putting resources into both payments and digital currency research and development. 

These efforts are already underway. Within the last three years, the Fed has hired at least seven former employees of Circle, the issuer of USD stories, five of whom held leadership roles at the company. In 2020, the central bank hired a former employee of Ripple, a payments technology company. 

“We are engaged in research and experimentation on our own and with partners related to payment technologies and digital currencies,” Powell said. “We are hiring people with that kind of expertise at a greater rate, and this is something we will be investing time and money in over the coming years.”

Other cryptocurrency topics the Fed hopes to weigh in on include the issuance and distribution of stablecoins, as well as banks’ safekeeping of digital assets and how they will facilitate customers’ sales and purchases of those assets. Powell also urged central banks around the world to proactively regulate digital assets.

“For us, fostering a safe, efficient and widely accessible payment system with a trusted form of money at its core, has really been a crucial aspect, if not the crucial aspect, of all our missions since our founding,” he said.