The Institute of Science & Technology’s AI Special Interest Group is delighted to announce the next in its series of seminars and welcomes William Lovell from the Bank of England.

Abstract

A stable payment system is vital for a stable economy. Digital technology creates an opportunity to improve the efficiency and cost of payments both domestically and cross border. This is true both for everyday retail payments made by private citizens and businesses as well high-value wholesale payments made between financial institutions. Central banks have a key role to play in this transformation given their role making money function correctly. The technology challenge is not insignificant. Any solution needs to be able to meet the challenge of scale and stability that the economy would demand. Creating an environment for innovation must take place with consideration of aspects such as the cyber threat. Although the final decision to launch a CBDC in the UK has not yet been made, The Bank of England is actively working on retail CBDC and consulting on the benefits of wholesale CBDC. This session looks at the technological challenges, the experimentation that has taken place and the Bank's approach to stimulating innovation.

Guest Speaker

William Lovell
Senior Advisor CBDC, The Bank of England

William is a Technology Advisor on CBDC, Data & Payments. With over 25 years of experience at the Bank of England, he has held a variety of technology roles from application developer and test manager through to heading up the strategy and architecture function. He is currently working on the design of CBDC with a particular focus on the technology challenges that need to be solved. He is co-chair of the Bank's Artificial Intelligence task force that looks at how they can make the best use of this technology across the Bank. He is also chair of CPMI API experts group working cross-border payments.