Bank of England launches Fintech Hub

In a speech given at HMT’s International Fintech Conference yesterday, the Bank of England's deputy governor, Dave Ramsden, said the Hub will be a central point of contact for the fintech sector to engage with the Bank.

Discussing the way fintech could impact the UK economy, Ramsden said he sees fintech "driving competition and a pick-up in productivity in the medium term".

Ramsden added that the Bank needs to keep pace with an evolving financial sector, and that "being open in our minds and approach are important steps in embracing and supporting new technology".

He noted that Open Banking is already changing the way that customers access and operate their bank accounts, such as by making them accessible via a single smartphone app developed by a third party.

Ramsden says the Bank is also investigating ways in which fintech could help to improve regulation, building on existing work internally and in collaboration with the FCA.

He continued: "We have initiated work to understand how machine readable technology could be applied to the next iteration of the PRA rulebook, and will continue to work closely with the FCA to understand the potential for machine readable regulation.

"We are also investigating if machine learning could be deployed to support judgement based supervision, via its application to both structured and unstructured data."

Increasing competitive pressures in retail banking, enabled in part by an increase in the use of fintech, also formed part of the exploratory scenario in the Bank's 2017 stress test.