Bank of England: Enabling the FinTech transformation: Revolution, Restoration, or Reformation? - speech by Mark Carney

17 June 2016

The Bank of England launched a FinTech Accelerator to work in partnership with FinTech firms on challenges that Bank of England, as a central bank, uniquely face. The Accelerator will work with new technology firms to help us harness FinTech innovations for central banking.

In return, it will offer firms the chance to demonstrate their solutions for real issues facing us as policymakers, together with the valuable ‘first client’ reference that comes with it. With time, the Accelerator will build a network of firms working in this space for the benefit of us and them alike.

Partner firms will be selected to engage in short Proof of Concept projects (POCs) via a transparent and competitive process, based on clearly defined selection criteria. These criteria will ensure each project has the potential to be truly innovative, relevant to the Bank’s Mission and that commercial considerations are taken into account.

Mark Carnez said: “At the end of the POC, the Bank will consider producing an assessment of the Bank’sexperience of the work. Where appropriate, we will consider making this accessible through publishing a description of the findings. For successfully completed POCs, the Bank will consider acting as a reference client for the firms.”

The Accelerator has already carried out initial work in the areas of data anonymisation, cyber security and distributed ledger technology. Other areas of potential future interest for the Accelerator include finding new ways to structure and analyse large datasets, machine learning, particularly in relation to anomaly detection and pattern recognition, and protection of the Bank’s sensitive data.

News release

Speech


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