Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli

Institution · Person

Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli was appointed Head of the BIS Innovation Hub on 25 November 2025, joining the BIS on 1 March 2026 from the IMF. At the IMF he was Assistant Director, Payments, Currencies and Infrastructure, a remit that overlaps closely with the cross-border tokenisation portfolio he now leads at the Hub. The appointment lands during the Hub's leadership transition (Andréa Maechler had been Acting Head) and immediately after mBridge graduated, both of which suggest the role is structurally about defining what the Hub does next rather than continuing existing pilots unchanged. For tokenisation operators, this is the appointment most likely to shape cross-border tokenisation infrastructure architecture across the next three to five years.

Why it matters for tokenisation

The IMF's Payments, Currencies and Infrastructure unit owns much of the institutional thinking on cross-border digital settlement, CBDC interoperability, and the future of the international payments architecture. Mancini-Griffoli's published work has covered CBDC design and the public-private split in digital money.
The BIS Innovation Hub Head is the lead on multi-jurisdictional tokenisation pilots (Project Agorá, post-mBridge governance, Mariana, Pyxtrial). The personality occupying the role materially affects which pilots ship in the next cycle.

Recent activity

1 Mar 2026Started at the BIS.
25 Nov 2025Appointed Head of the BIS Innovation Hub (BIS press release).

Open questions

Whether the appointment signals a re-prioritisation of the cross-border tokenisation portfolio toward Project Agorá or toward bilateral wholesale CBDC corridors.
Whether Mancini-Griffoli's IMF view on CBDC public-private division will reshape Hub pilot architecture.