As Andrea mentioned, the focus today is our approach to encouraging diversity in our financial market intelligence contacts, and the networks we engage with. Our priority is to speak to a diverse group of people from a broad range of financial institutions. Our discussions with market participants help us understand market developments, and the implications for our Policy Committees. So all of the arguments about why diversity is important internally here at the Bank of England hold just as firmly when we engage with you externally. We are embedding that approach into our core market intelligence framework, to underscore our commitment. So why is this a priority for us? First and foremost, it’s the right thing to do. As a public institution, we need to represent the diversity of the country in what we look like, who we talk to and the impact of our decisions. But, just as importantly, it helps us achieve our objectives. Our mission is to promote the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability. And diversity in its many forms is a critical part of delivering that mission. Improved cognitive diversity helps make for better decision making. The lack of such diversity has been highlighted as one important factor in the bank and regulatory failures of 2008.5 Having a diverse range of institutions and business models brings positive benefits for financial system resiliency6 – something that you will not be surprised to hear matters a great deal to the Bank of England!
We want to continue to work together with all of you here on this agenda. We look forward to hearing your ideas, suggestions and questions through the panel discussion coming up shortly, and in our networking session with our market intelligence teams later on today. We want to use 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  that as a starting point to build stronger links with a wider, more diverse group of colleagues, and also deepen those over time, as they progress through their careers. There is a very important further issue in all of this, which is sadly highly topical, namely to ask what is the antidote to the problem of lobbying? The answer is not to speak to no-one. That is not likely to lead to good decision making. The answer is to be rigorous about speaking to a diverse range of people to get their views. We look forward to engaging with you in the future, working together to understand financial market developments from a diverse and varied range of perspectives to inform our policy committee decisions. Thank you I am grateful to Christine Boykiw, Sumita Ghosh, Sam Juthani, Ankita Mehta and Arjun Popat for their assistance in helping me prepare these remarks.​ 1 See Carney (2017) – link in References section. Gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation and  education are types of ‘identity’ diversity. ‘Cognitive’ diversity is about our perspectives and how we think about and solve problems.