David Ramsden: Resilience and innovation in post-trade

Speech by Sir David Ramsden, Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking of the Bank of England, at the Association for Financial Markets in Europe 12th Annual European Post Trade Conference, London, 8 May 2019.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Introduction

I'd like to start by paying tribute to Simon Lewis and his nine years of tireless service as CEO of AFME, which he has announced will be ending this autumn. I'd like to wish him every success for the future.

I'm delighted to be here at today at the AFME post-trade conference. This is my first AFME European Post Trade conference, but I believe it's your 12th. There has been a lot of change in the European post-trade1 space over those 12 years. Post-trade has traditionally been a little in the background - a part of the financial system we might refer to as plumbing - sometimes out of view, but absolutely critical for functioning. Today, various developments have brought post trade to the fore, and made it an increasingly exciting space to be involved in.

I'm going to focus on technological developments and also resilience, two themes which resonate with my responsibilities at the Bank and my priorities for 2019. The Bank's involvement here spans two levels - of soft and hard infrastructure. On soft infrastructure we can think of the Bank's regulatory approach, led by our policy committees - FPC and PRC, and the Financial Market Infrastructure Board, and the rules it makes and standards it sets.