Bank of England Governor Mark Carney commented last week that Fintech should neither be the Wild West nor strangled at birth.
Even for an establishment formed in 1694, it seems the all-pervasive waves of fintech cannot be ignored. The Bank of England Governor Mark Carney had been due to give a speech entitled «Enabling the Fintech transformation: Revolution, Restoration, or Reformation?» His speech however was changed for another after the tragic death of the U.K. MP Jo Cox.
The address from Carney was to coincide with the announcement of a dedicated Fintech Accelerator from The Bank of England, to work in partnership with firms on challenges that central banks, uniquely face.
Asia and U.K Bridge
The accelerator will work with new technology firms to help 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 both parties.
finews.asia reported recently that Singapore and the UK had announced the «Fintech Bridge» where the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) agreed a cooperation agreement on sharing and using information on financial services innovation in their respective markets.
Democratic Financial System
The Bank of England 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.
In his speech Carney concluded that with time, fintech could mean a more open, more transparent, and more democratic global financial system.
