United Kingdom
Central Banking Awards: BoE a leader in fintech
Awards go to the Bank of England, Vizor, Lanqart and Openlink for their innovative work
Initiative of the year: Bank of England’s FinTech Accelerator
The UK central bank has embraced fintech service providers in a controlled manner to bolster its cyber-security and payments capabilities
BoE commits to improving liquidity facilities
Report says central bank could do more to ensure smooth operations
BoE economists challenge conventional wisdom on yield curve
Steeper curve may not be as good for bank profitability as widely believed
BoE’s Tenreyro sees hopeful signs for UK productivity
Many factors dragging on productivity may soon start to fade, MPC member says, though the UK seems to be missing out on a global investment boom
BoE’s Woods warns of ‘point of tension’ in Brexit negotiations
PRA chief fears EU supervisors may adopt a local mindset when dealing with cross-border firms
HKMA launches consultation on open API framework
Open API enables personalised services for bank users but requires access to customer data
People: Peru’s Velarde bags BIS job; Belsham gets second term on BoE committee
People: Peruvian governor succeeds Poloz as Council for the America’s chair; David Belsham gets second term at Prudential Regulation Committee; and more
BoE paper outlines big-data-based early warning indicator
Text mining approach seeks to capture how narratives can drive action in financial markets
Balancing reserves’ effectiveness and transparency
Why do countries accumulate more and more reserves if they know intervention may prove ineffective? Iris Yeung speaks to Canada’s Eric Wolfe
People: Bank of England official to become FCA chair
Charles Randell to take over as FCA chair in April; BoE appoints its first job sharers at executive director level; Vietnam names deputy governor; Mark Mullinix to leave Fed; and more
BoE exploring ways to improve gender balance
Deputy governor wants HR department to investigate movement from manager to senior manager; senior group looks into how to support women preparing for heads of division roles
Book notes: Money in the Great Recession, by Tim Congdon
A stimulating collection of papers on the monetarist theory that had central bankers in late 2008 focused on boosting the quantity of broad money “the Great Recession would not have happened”
BoE sets out post-Brexit supervision plans
Central bank says UK will aim to stay open as banks, insurers and CCPs are brought under the PRA’s oversight; changes imply heavy workload for the supervisor
UK households pessimistic about fortunes in 2018
Survey published by BoE reveals UK households do not expect an improvement in their financial positions in the coming year
BoE expects UK inflation slowdown
Bank of England keeps rates on hold at 0.5%; disinflationary base effects likely to outweigh tightening labour market in near term
Early asset purchases much more successful – BIS paper
Authors find effectiveness falls over time as the shock wears off, questioning the value of long-running quantitative easing
UK inflation breaks out of target band
Inflation now above the BoE’s 3% upper limit, though breach may prove temporary
BoE paper lays out ‘financial conditions index’ for UK
Index proves valuable as a summary measure and also as an input to forecasting
Bank of England operations could leave London under Labour government
Report envisages BoE’s regional offices becoming part of national investment strategy; inflation mandate could also be changed
FCA mulls use of AI to tackle money laundering
Crime unit head says the financial regulator views machine learning as a complement to human judgement, not a replacement
David Mayes: 1946–2017
The internationally minded professor was a stalwart of the central banking community
Loss absorbency is a challenge to implement – BoE’s Gracie
Delays in other jurisdictions are making it hard to roll out final rules for total loss-absorbing capacity, says executive director
BoE seeks to enhance stress-test model oversight
Prudential Regulatory Authority to enforce new stress-test model principles in 2018; smaller banks asked to tailor them to their operations