Jon Cunliffe: Financial stability and low for long

Speech by Sir Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor for Financial Stability of the Bank of England, at the Society of Professional Economists Annual Conference, London, 14 October 2019.

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

Jane Austen's face appears on the Bank of England's latest £10 note, which entered circulation in September 2017. But the Bank's association with one of the world's finest authors goes back much further: as the meticulously kept records of the Bank show, the successful novelist invested much of the proceeds of her writing in Bank of England Annuities.

In July 1815, for example, she purchased 'Navy Five per Cent annuities' - an undated Bank of England security - with a face value of £300. 'Navy Fives' were a popular investment during the Napoleonic Wars, paying annual interest, as the name suggests, of 5%. Jane did not purchase the stock at par value - research using the Bank's archives has established that she paid around £250 - making an annual nominal interest rate on her risk free investment of nearly 6%.