The Bank has a full range of unconventional policy tools, including explicit forward guidance about interest rates, negative nominal interest rates, and programs such as quantitative easing and other types of asset purchases. During the crisis, the Bank successfully used a conditional commitment to guide market expectations about future interest rates.
We pledged in April 2009 to leave the policy rate unchanged for a year, depending on the outlook for inflation.23 The Bank has never had to use negative nominal interest rates, quantitative easing or other asset purchases, although these have been implemented in other countries.