Central Bank of Iceland

Central Bank of Iceland
Seðlabanki Íslands
Headquarters	Kalkofnsvegur 1, Reykjavík
Established	7 April 1961
Ownership	100% state ownership
Governor	Ásgeir Jónsson
Central bank of	Iceland
Currency	Icelandic króna; ISK (ISO 4217)
Reserves	4.790 billion USD
Preceded by	Landsbanki Íslands
Website	cb.is (in English); sedlabanki.is (in Icelandic)

The Central Bank of Iceland (Icelandic: Seðlabanki Íslands) is the central bank or reserve bank of Iceland. It has served in this capacity since 1961, when it was created by an act of the Alþingi out of the central banking department of Landsbanki Íslands, which had the sole right of note issuance since 1927 and had conducted only limited monetary policy.

Seðlabanki Íslands is owned by the Icelandic government, and is administered by a governor and a seven-member supervisory board, elected by the country's parliament following each general election.^[2] It has the sole right to issue notes and coins of Icelandic krónur and to manage the state's foreign currency reserves. The Central Bank Act of 1986 eliminated the ability of the Central Bank to regulate the interest rates of commercial banks and savings banks.

Though nominally independent, the Central Bank of Iceland was historically expected to follow the lead of the central government. In 2001, however, a floating exchange rate policy was introduced and since then the Central Bank has been empowered to adopt an inflation target and manage monetary policy so as to achieve price stability independent of the policies of the central government.

Governors

#	Governor	Took office	Left office	Tenure length
1	Jóhannes Nordal	1961	1993	31–32 years
2	Jón G. Maríasson	1961	1967	5–6 years
3	Vilhjálmur Þór	1961	1964	2–3 years
4	Sigtryggur Klemensson	1966	1971	4–5 years
5	Davíð Ólafsson	1967	1986	18–19 years
6	Svanbjörn Frímannsson	1971	1973	1–2 years
7	Guðmundur Hjartarson	1974	1984	9–10 years
8	Tómas Árnason	1985	1993	7–8 years
9	Geir Hallgrímsson	1986	1990	3–4 years
10	Birgir Ísleifur Gunnarsson	1991	2005	13–14 years
11	Jón Sigurðsson	1993	1994	0–1 years
12	Steingrímur Hermannsson	1994	1998	3–4 years
13	Finnur Ingólfsson	2000	2002	1–2 years
14	Ingimundur Friðriksson	2002	2003	0–1 years
15	Jón Sigurðsson	2003	2006	2–3 years
16	Eiríkur Guðnason	1994	2009	14–15 years
17	Davíð Oddsson	2005	2009	3–4 years
18	Ingimundur Friðriksson	2006	2009	2–3 years
19	Svein Harald Øygard	2009	2009	0 years
20	Már Guðmundsson	2009	2019	9–10 years
21	Ásgeir Jónsson	2019	Incumbent	4–5 years

Monetary reform

In 2015, after the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis, the government of Iceland considered "a revolutionary monetary proposal" to abolish private money creation and to end to fractional-reserve banking.^[3] Similar to the Swiss Sovereign Money Initiative, this plan would remove the power of money creation from the commercial banks and give it to the Central Bank of Iceland.^[3]