Finance is one of the largest sectors of the UK economy. Around 400,000 people are employed in financial 3  services in London alone, 1.1 million across the country as whole. Their enterprise contributes £ billion to our national income, £ billion to our exports and £ billion to the Exchequer, equivalent to two-thirds of the NHS budget. 4  Your work matters because finance is not an end in itself; financial markets serve the real economy. By financing firms that hire, invest and expand, markets drive growth. By opening up cross border trade and investment, they create new opportunities for businesses and savers. By transferring risks to those most willing and able to bear them, markets help households and businesses insure against the unexpected. 1  See Fair and Effective Markets Review Final Report, HM Treasury, Bank of England and FCA (June 2015). At: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/Pages/fmreview.aspx 2 See BIS Triennial Bank Survey (at http://www.bis.org/publ/rpfx16fx.pdf) and BIS OTC data at (https://www.bis.org/statistics/d12_1.pdf) and The City UK “Key facts about the UK as an international financial centre” (November 2016). 3 Workforce jobs and financial services jobs in London (ONS). 4 GDP and exports data (ONS), tax revenues from PWC/City of London “Total Tax Contribution of UK Financial Services” and NHS Budget data at: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/overview.aspx. 2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  2  Most fundamentally, your work matters because markets are the best mechanism to drive innovation, productivity, and prosperity. The Problem  Though markets are generally a force for good, markets can go wrong.
11  The Way Forward  The mutually reinforcing relationship between the regulatory framework and market good practice should help the FMSB, and other market standard-setters, maintain their ambition and momentum even once memories of post-crisis misconduct fade. It could sharpen collective incentives to address, more conclusively, outstanding ambiguities that act as obstacles to real markets. And it should help mitigate emerging vulnerabilities. The Bank of England encourages the FMSB to consider where additional guidance and worked examples could buttress its existing standards, to guard against the risk that certain principles mean different things to different parties. The City’s special responsibility, given its pre-eminent position in global markets, is why it has brought so many ideas and such energy to advance reforms to address the misconduct risk that has plagued global markets. 10  See page 16, Financial Reporting Council (FRC), “Corporate Culture and the Role of Boards: Report of observations”, July 2016. In light of its responsibilities for conduct and market integrity, the FCA is consulting on an approach under which it would formalise that in supervising to, and enforcing, SMR rules for unregulated markets and activities, it would consider whether firms and individuals are meeting “proper standards of market conduct” with reference to “recognised” industry codes.