KEVIN COWAN was appointed Board Member of the Central Bank of Chile as of January 2026.
Mr. Cowan holds a degree in commercial engineering from the Catholic University of Chile and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Prior to his appointment as a member of the Central Bank's board, he served as Chairman of the Financial Committee and director of Itaú Bank Chile. He is a full professor at the Adolfo Ibáñez University Business School.
Served as commissioner and vice president of the Financial Market Commission from 2018 to 2023, and chief economist and capital market coordinator with the Ministry of Finance in 2017.
Between 2014 and 2017 he held various positions at the Inter-American Development Bank and IDB Invest (IIC). He was executive director and alternate executive director of the organization, as well as senior economist for the Andean countries.
Between 2005 and 2013, he was the Director of the Financial Policy Division at the Central Bank of Chile.
Roundtable Room 2, Ground Floor
Open
Tokenization is reshaping financial infrastructure across many economies. The decisions that are being made now on architecture, standards and governance will determine whether that infrastructure serves developed and emerging and developing economies, or leaves some behind. Ensuring that outcome requires senior public sector voices at the centre of these conversations.
This session brings both working groups and the public sector Oversight Panel together for the first time. Working group leads will present their confirmed problem statements on what the evidence shows, and receive feedback and recommendations that working groups will pursue to build the practitioner's guide that will publish at Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2026.
About the initiative
GFTN is launching _Tokenization in Finance: Evidence and Implementation Pathways_, a structured, multi-stakeholder initiative convening two working groups drawn from leading financial institutions, infrastructure providers, and market participants to assemble a practitioner-oriented evidence base spanning spanning digital money and payment rails through to tokenized real-world assets, securities, funds, and capital markets infrastructure. At Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2026, the initiative will publish a practitioner guide designed to give financial institutions a structured basis for sequencing their digital asset strategies, and to equip regulators and finance ministries in emerging and developing economies with implementation pathways they can draw on directly.