*********************** We look to history when we chose a new character, but money has a future not just a past. The selection of the new £ note character is not my only announcement today… because as I alluded to earlier, money is evolving. Today, it is much more than polymer. While cash remains invaluable to many, it is now the second most frequent transaction method after debit card payments.1 And innovation is expected to make other electronic forms of payment easier to make and faster to settle. The technological revolution in finance will bring more tailored products, keener pricing, and more diverse sources of credit for households and SMEs. The Bank is embracing fintech and ensuring that it develops in ways that maximise the opportunities and minimise the risks for society. We aim to enable, empower and ensure. 1  Cash transactions made up 37% of all transactions in 2017. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  4  Enable new technology by developing the right environment for fintech to thrive, such as by upgrading the Bank’s hard infrastructure on which finance relies – such as our large value payments system, RTGS. The Bank is one of the first to allow non-bank payment service providers to directly access its system, something that is lowering the costs of payments across borders. Enabling also means having the right soft infrastructure, such as rules and regulations, to help fintech thrive.
For example, Ehrmann and Fratzscher (2005) estimate that, over one day, about one-third of US Treasury bill rate changes feed through to euro area interbank rates, but that beyond this US monetary policy has no significant impact on the euro area. Neely (2015) finds spillovers of a similar magnitude. Curcuru et al. (2018), in contrast, find that during a one-day period, ECB announcement surprises spill over to US Treasury yields in a similar manner as Federal Open Market Committee announcement surprises spill over to German Bund yields. 2 See, for example, Kim (2001), Georgiadis (2016), Chen et al. (2017) and Iacoviello and Navarro (2018). The  5/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  results for conventional and unconventional monetary policy are similar. Rogers et al. (2014) and Chen et al. (2016) provide evidence on large spillovers from the Federal Reserve’s unconventional monetary policy to the euro area. 3 Ca’ Zorzi et al. (2019) and Jarociński and Karadi (2018) draw a distinction between monetary policy surprises  (the so-called shocks) and other surprises, such as news effects. 4 Spreads relative to speculative bonds (below BBB rating), averaged over all maturities. 5 Corporate bond spreads increase by about 10 basis points and stock markets decline by about 50 basis points  in response to a monetary policy shock that increases one-year government bond yields by 2 basis points. 6 See Ca’ Zorzi et al. (2019). 7 See Miranda-Agrippino and Rey (2018).