Payments: Diversity Matters Speech given by Victoria Cleland, Executive Director, Banking, Payments and Innovation  European Women Payments Network Annual Conference, Amsterdam 5 June 2019  I would like to thank Samantha Leighton, Richard Lewis and Sara Ward for their help in preparing this speech. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  I am delighted to be speaking today at the European Women Payments Network (EWPN) Annual Conference. Amsterdam, as home to what is reputedly the world’s oldest stock exchange, founded in 16021, is an apt location to discuss payments. While people’s fundamental requirements when exchanging value probably have not changed very much since then, the choice of how people make payments, and the technology which facilitates this, certainly has. Such changes can only come about through listening to what is needed and harnessing innovation. How much more quickly would these changes have come about if EWPN had been around a few centuries ago? EWPN’s focus is ‘making diversity matter in fintech’, by building a community for women and by championing a more diverse and inclusive payments industry for all. In keeping with this, I want to set out how, through the lens of our work in payments, we are embracing the changes that fintech can bring and why diversity matters to the Bank of England. The Bank’s mission is to promote the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability.
We are also seeking to develop a renewed service that will be message network agnostic: capable of sending and receiving payment messages from multiple sources and interfacing with multiple messaging networks without compromising on levels of security or proof. And we will continue to support the resilience of the renewed RTGS by diversifying operations across two sites with a third stand-by settlement platform which is geographically remote. As I stressed at the start, the Bank needs to reflect the diversity of the people it serves and so increasing the diversity of the Bank’s workforce is at the top of our agenda. We have set ourselves stretching but 12  https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/payments/rtgs-renewal-proof-of-concept.pdf 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  6  achievable targets in respect of increasing the representation of women and BAME colleagues at all levels of the business.13 And we have implemented a wide range of initiatives designed to improve diversity in our recruitment, development and retention of talent across a range of protected characteristics. As a member of the Bank’s senior leadership team, I have personal accountability for delivering a step change in the Bank’s diversity. This is crucial in my own Directorate but also for the Bank as a whole.