Alex Brazier: Five years of macro-prudential - regulating the square mile for all 94,000 square miles

Speech by Mr Alex Brazier, Executive Director for Financial Stability Strategy and Risk of the Bank of England, at the Future of Finance Conference, Imperial College Business School, London, 19 April 2018.

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

It is now five years since the birth of the UK's post-crisis reforms to financial regulation.

Reforms that brought the 'twin peaks' of a conduct supervisor and, for banks and insurance companies (and the largest investment firms), a dedicated prudential supervisor.

But the novel addition, atop those twin peaks, was a new macro prudential look-out - the Financial Policy Committee of the Bank of England - that would have real duties and powers.

Its duty: to look up and out, from the rules for finance - the Square Mile - to the outcome they deliver for the end users in all 94,000 square miles of the UK.

The outcome it seeks: a financial system that serves households and businesses in bad times, as well as good; a system that doesn't disrupt the economy but still delivers for it.

Its power: where the rules don't do that, change them.