Seizing the Opportunities from Digital Finance
Speech given by
Andy Haldane
Chief Economist and Member of the Monetary Policy Committee
TheCityUK 10th Anniversary Conference
18 November 2020
The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Bank of England or the
Monetary Policy Committee. I would like to thank Kathleen Blake, Shiv Chowla, Harvey Daniell,
Rachel Greener, Rachel James, Jack Meaning, Varun Paul, Andrei Pustelnikov, Oliver Thew,
Ryland Thomas, Cormac Sullivan and Michael Yoganayagam for their help in preparing the text. I
would like to thank Andrew Bailey, Alex Brazier, Jon Cunliffe, Andrew Hauser, Alice Pugh,
Christina Segal-Knowles, Silvana Tenreyro and Jan Vlieghe for their comments.
1
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Let me thank the TheCityUK for the opportunity to speak at this 10th Anniversary event at such a critical time
for the financial services sector and the economy as a whole. We all live in hope of the three Rs that are the
theme of the conference - Recovery, Rebalancing and Revitalisation. With the recent positive news about
the three R's in the context of financial services.
vaccines, that hope is now justified. I want to discuss today
Covid is a twin crisis, a health crisis and an economic crisis rolled into one. It has exposed every person and
every business in every country in the world to that double jeopardy. In the UK, it has already resulted in
over 50,000 deaths, more than 1 million people losing their jobs, around 9 million people seeing their
incomes fall and almost the whole country feeling more anxious about the future.
For those reasons, the Covid crisis risks leaving lasting scars on us as individuals and on the wider
economy. Economic scars, such as persistently lower levels of investment and innovation and persistently
higher levels of unemployment and debt, which drag on economic growth. And psychological scars, such as
increased levels of caution in how and how much we interact, travel and spend.
The role of economic policy, including monetary and fiscal policy, is to cushion the impact of these risks on
households and companies, thereby limiting the depth and longevity of the scarring effects of the crisis on
the wider economy. Indeed, limiting that long-term scarring helps explain why monetary and fiscal policies
have responded on an unprecedented scale and at an unprecedented pace during the Covid crisis.
Covid is not a traditional cyclical shock whose effects will eventually wash-out. It is instead a structural
shock with lasting implications for the behaviour of individuals and the business models of companies. While
some behavioural shifts will leave scars, others will open up new opportunities. The crisis has already flicked
a digital switch, accelerating pre-existing shifts in how companies and individuals work, save and spend.
At its peak in April, around half the UK workforce was working remotely, up tenfold from its pre-Covid levels.
platform's users rising
There has been a Zoom-boom, with the video-conferencing 20-fold and its share price
having risen almost tenfold at one point in October compared with its pre-Covid level. Most workers and
businesses expect these remote working habits to persist, if on a less dramatic scale, long after Covid has
abated, with a mixed model of office and home working the new norm.1
This digital switch has also been flicked on how we spend. There has been a surge in online shopping,
which has risen from a fifth of transactions pre-Covid to more than a quarter now. Online food deliveries
have doubled since the start of the year. And what is true of consumers is true of businesses too. Rates of
adoption of digital technologies were four times faster during the first few months of this year than in the
1
Haldane (2020)
2
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whole of 2019.2 E-commerce platforms like Shopify and Etsy have seen booming growth, with new stores
created on Shopify rising over 70% between the first and second quarters.
These digital switches are clear within financial services too, not least in payments. There has been a further
ratchet down in the use of physical cash for transactions, with ATM withdrawals in October around a quarter
lower than a year ago, while use of contactless and remote payments rose more than 10% in the 12 months
to July and now make up more than 6 out of every 10 card transactions.3
In my comments today, I want to focus on two specific areas of financial services - payments by individuals
and lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). These activities have long been at the very heart
of banking. Yet they were also activities where the pace of innovative change had, until recently, been
sedate, with costs high and access constrained.
That is changing. Even before Covid struck, new technologies, data and players were promising a phase
shift in financial innovation, a fintech revolution. While this embraced all aspects of financial services,
progress was most rapid in the area of payments and lending. Last year the Bank of England published a
report on the Future of Finance, overseen by Huw van Steenis, which laid out an ambitious reform agenda.4
The Covid crisis has accelerated that change and could serve as a catalyst for faster innovation in future.
What was a digital priority pre-Covid has, for many, now become a digital necessity. The combination of new
technology, and shifts in behaviour resulting from Covid, presents a real opportunity to refashion the
payments and lending landscape, for good, in ways which benefit households, companies and the economy.
The Evolving Payments Landscape
The making and receiving of payments is existential to banking. Uniquely, the liabilities of a bank are money
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a payments medium. This distinguishes them from other commercial institutions and is what makes them
"special".5
Money has some of the characteristics of a quasi-public good, whose under- or over-supply
imposes negative externalities on the economy. That explains why banks and payments systems, who have
a special role in creating and distributing money, are subject to state oversight and support.
Over the arc of history we have seen steady innovations in payments technologies, some initiated by the
private sector, others by the state: from the first widely minted coins in 5th century BC Turkey to the first
notes in 7th century AD China; from the first cheque in 1659 in England to the first wire transfer in 1871 in
2
Haldane and Mayfield (2020)
3
UK Finance
4
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/report/2019/future-of-finance
5
Tobin (1963).
3
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the United States; from the first ATMs and credit cards in the mid-1960s to the first Bitcoin in 2009 (Figure
1).6
Figure 1: Timeline of innovations in money
These improvements in payments technologies have delivered gradual, but significant, benefits to
households and companies as they pay their bills and manage their finances: improved financial safety and
security, and increased accessibility and convenience, often at ever-increasing speeds and ever-lower costs.
Through these new payment technologies, some of the fruits of financial innovation have been harvested.
Whether enough have been harvested, in particular in the area of payments, is an open question.
It is just over a decade ago that the late Paul Volcker famously remarked: "the ATM has been the only useful
innovation in banking for the past 20 years". Enfield in North London - the home of the first ATM - might be
surprised to hear it is the cradle of modern-day financial innovation. There is empirical evidence beyond the
anecdote, however, to suggest financial innovation has not always proceeded at warp speed.
Thomas Philippon has constructed a time-series of the unit cost of financial intermediation in the United
States, with adjustments for the improving quality of these services over time (Chart 1).7 Measuring those
striking finding is that the unit cost of financial services
concepts is very difficult. Nonetheless, Philippon's
has barely changed over the past century. That is difficult to reconcile with rapid-fire financial innovation.
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In payments it is easier to see progress for example, the secular rise in use of card payments over cash.
Often less visible to the end-consumer is the cost to them of those payments. For cards, these include the
6
Birch (2019).
7
Philippon (2019).
4
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merchant service charge (MSC) paid by the merchant to their merchant acquirer (such as Worldpay or
Barclaycard) for each transaction. Ultimately, these costs are borne by consumers through higher prices.
Chart 1: Unit cost of finance in the United States
Source: Philippon (2019)
The Payment System Regulator has estimated the weighted average MSC across UK card transactions to
be around 0.6% (Chart 2). As roughly 40% of merchant acquirer revenue comes from other fees, the all-in
cost of cards is higher-still.8 These costs are not evenly distributed. For SMEs with the lowest-turnover, the
average MSC is three times larger, at around 1.9%. Card fees operate like a regressive tax on smaller
businesses and their customers.9 More generally, these card transaction fees seem high for what is, by
banking standards, not an especially complex task.
Of late, there is evidence of the picture on financial innovation generally, and payments specifically, having
improved. Unit costs of financial intermediation in the US have started to fall over the past decade or so.
And on a cross-country basis, the unit cost of intermediation in the UK has been materially lower than in
other countries for several decades (Chart 3).10 This chimes with other evidence suggesting financial
innovation has gathered pace since the Global Financial Crisis.
8
It is well-established that the cost of cross-border payments is higher still, sometimes much higher, see Carney (2019).
9
Data on WeChat and AliPay in China suggests their business models have led to lower fees for smaller merchants.
10
Bazot (2018).
5
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Chart 2: Prices paid for card-acquiring services by merchants of different sizes
<£380,000 £380,000 - £1mn £1mn - £10mn
£10mn - £50mn >£50mn
per cent
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: PSR (2020).
Note: Based on data provided by the five largest merchant acquirers. The average MSC is calculated by dividing the total value of fees
paid for card-acquiring services by the total value of purchase transactions. Merchant size categories are based on annual card
turnover.
The past decade has seen a rising number of new, non-traditional players and new, often data-driven,
technologies and products enter the financial services market. As in the past, London has been a global hub
for this fintech reformation, a home to over 2,000 fintech companies, more than any other global city.
London fintechs have received $3.6bn in funding so far year, second only to San Francisco.11
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Chart 3: Unit cost of finance international comparison
Source: Bazot (2018).
11
The UK capital also takes the top spot for deal count with 169 deals so far this year.
6
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The fintech wave is affecting every dimension of financial services, from lending to insurance to asset
management. Interestingly, though, it is in payments where the pace of change has been fastest. Having
been at the back of the innovation queue a decade ago, payments have quickly moved to the front. In the
third quarter, payments companies globally raised almost $4 billion across over 100 deals, comfortably
above any other fintech sector.
At a retail level, we have seen innovation reflected in the rapidly rising share of online, mobile and
contactless payments. In the UK, card payments overtook the use of cash for everyday transactions in 2017.
In several countries alternatives to card payments are developing, with app-based retail payments which
allow fast, online person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-business (P2B) payments. Examples include Swish
in Sweden, iDEAL in the Netherlands and Zelle in the US.
In the UK, a significant step forward was taken with the introduction of Faster Payments in 2008. More
recently in 2017, the UK introduced Open Banking. Subject to privacy and security requirements being in
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place, Open Banking allows individuals to share their financial data with financial services providers such
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as fintechs promoting wider competition and better enabling customers to shop around.
By October, more than 2 million customers had signed up to Open Banking, with more than 80 live open
banking apps and products in the Open Banking App Store. Some of these were consumer-facing (bank
account aggregators, debt advice, charitable giving), while others were business-focussed (accountancy and
tax, debt management, loans and alternative lending, SME financial management).
Despite this progress, the UK remains behind some other countries on P2P and P2B payments. And the full
potential of Open Banking remains largely unrealised, with awareness and use remaining low. Around
two-thirds of banking customers have never heard of Open Banking and, for around half of customers, their
current bank does not even offer an Open Banking service. This unrealised potential is perhaps greatest
among SMEs, to which I will return.
"digital currencies" as an alternative, if not
More recently still, we have seen the rapid emergence of so-called
entirely new, payments medium. These are intended to serve as cheaper and more convenient means of
payment than either cash or cards and already come in a variety of flavours, depending on the nature of the
transaction (retail versus wholesale), the provider (public versus private) and the underlying technology (for
example, distributed ledgers).12
A number of companies are developing digital currencies to enable settlement of wholesale transactions.
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For example, Fnality - a consortium of banks is aiming to build a network of 24/7 high-value payment
12
Bech and Garratt (2017).
7
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systems in multiple currencies, enabling improved wholesale settlement efficiency and reduced exposures
between financial institutions. The Bank is considering whether this model can be enabled in sterling.
There are a number of initiatives to create private digital currencies for retail transactions. Some of these are
"stablecoins" which
so-called use backing assets to seek to maintain a tight relationship with an existing
currency or basket of currencies. This distinguishes them from crypto-assets, such as Bitcoin, which have
no such backing. Perhaps the best-known of these stablecoins is the proposal by Libra, though there are
others.13
Finally, a number of central banks, including the Bank of England, are in parallel assessing the case for
issuing their own digital currencies, either for wholesale or general purposes. The Bank issued a discussion
paper on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) earlier this year.14 Last month, seven central banks and
the BIS outlined some foundational principles and core features for any publicly-available CBDC.15
The precise evolutionary path of digital currencies from here is unclear. If history is any guide, a
co-evolutionary path is likely, with an eco-system of diverse and competing payments media and systems
emerging, some wholesale, others retail, some private, others public. The technologies supporting these
systems may also differ. This is the pattern we see across many national payments systems today.
Diversity and competition are, generally-speaking, positive features of an eco-system, including financial
eco-systems. Other things equal, they tend to foster both efficiency and stability, a divine combination.16
Nonetheless, as history also shows, market-driven evolutionary forces do not always result either in a stable
transition, or in an optimal end-point, for users of these systems.
One reason for that is because there are very significant network economies of scale and scope in
payments, which can lock in first-mover advantages and stymie competition and contestability. These same
competitive forces can also result in higher-risk (higher-return) payments media and payments systems
crowding-out lower-risk (lower-return) alternatives, thereby raising systemic risk. This is another example of
Gresham's Law ("bad money driving out good") at work.
To address these systemic problems of deficient competition and excess risk, regulatory intervention, or in
some cases state provision, has typically been necessary to shape the evolutionary path of payments and
payments systems. Interestingly, the Faster Payments and Open Banking innovations in UK payments over
recent years came largely at the behest of regulators. And the design of retail and wholesale payments
systems in the UK has been heavily shaped by regulatory interventions to safeguard systemic risk.
13
Including Tether, TrueUSD and Paxos.
14
See https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/paper/2020/central-bank-digital-currency-opportunities-challenges-and-design-discussion-paper
15
See https://www.bis.org/publ/othp33.htm
16
For example, Haldane and May (2011).
8
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Bank's Financial Policy Committee
In the area of systemic risk, the (FPC) recently set out some principles to
underpin the safety and soundness of private sector stablecoins used for payments. In essence, these are
expected to meet equivalent standards to commercial bank money in relation to stability of value, robustness
of legal claim and the ability to redeem at par in fiat.17 In his recent statement to Parliament, the Chancellor
announced an HMT consultation on private sector stablecoins.
underlying the FPC's and Chancellor's
A key principle statements is that the impact of stablecoins may
extend well beyond payments system stability and efficiency. As they potentially disrupt the ultimate
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settlement medium money they may carry important implications for financial and monetary stability too.
Generally speaking, the debate on digital currencies has so far focussed rather too little on these
foundational issues.
"do no harm" to financial
A minimalist criteria would be that digital currencies, whatever their form, should
and monetary stability.18 By that, I do not mean these innovations should not cause some disruption to
existing players and products - that is in the very nature of innovation and competition. But there are
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legitimate concerns a digital currency, whether public or private, could generate systemic risks for example,
due to large, unstable flows of funds from commercial banks deposits into private sector stablecoins or
CBDC, especially at times of stress.19
There are also concerns that rapid growth of, in effect, "narrow banking" institutions could crowd-out funding,
and ultimately credit provision, by the banking system over the medium-term.20 They may also affect the
transmission of interest rates to the economy. In either case, digital currencies could potentially impose a
macro-economic cost.21
"do no harm"
It is clearly crucial these minimalist assurances are satisfied before advancing too far down the
digital currency path. The Bank is undertaking research, as part of its newly-published research agenda, to
do just that.22 At the same time, it is also important that some of the longer-term potential structural benefits
of digital currencies are not overlooked when charting an evolutionary path for digital currencies.
On financial stability, a widely-used digital currency would change the topology of banking in a potentially
profound way. It could result in the emergence of something closer to narrow banking, with safe
segregated from banks' riskier
payments-based activities to some extent credit-provision activities. In other
words, the traditional model of banking would be disrupted.
17
See https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/financial-stability-report/2019/december-2019
18
As laid out in https://www.bis.org/publ/othp33.htm
19
Broadbent (2016).
20
"Narrow banks" are institutions whose deposit liabilities are backed by highly liquid and low risk assets that better match the risk and duration
characteristics of these liabilities.
21
See Meaning et al (2018) and Barrdear and Kumhof (2016).
22
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/bank-of-england-agenda-for-research
9
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While the focus so far has been on the costs of this disruption for funding and credit provision weight
needs also to be given to the potential longer-term benefits of such a structural shift. Banking instabilities
between the asset and liability sides of a bank's
arise from the risk and duration mismatch which arise
balance sheet. Leverage and illiquidity are the common denominator of all banking crises.23
In principle, separating safe payments and risky lending activities could lead to a closer alignment of risk and
duration on the balance sheets of those institutions offering these services. We would move closer to a
bifurcated intermediation model of narrow banking for payments (money backed by safe assets) and limited
purpose banking for lending (risky assets backed by capital-uncertain liabilities).24 In principle, this would
reduce, at source, the intrinsic instabilities of the traditional banking model.
Of course, there could be costs as well as benefits from such a functional separation, including the possibility
of reduced credit provision due to reduced levels of liquidity and maturity-transformation, that need to be
worked through.25 At the very least, however, these longer-term potential stability benefits of a very different
functional model of intermediation need to be evaluated and weighed. And, so far at least, they have largely
been ignored in discussion of the case for digital currencies.
On the monetary policy side, one of the most pressing issues for monetary policymakers today is the zero (or
close to zero) lower bound (ZLB) on interest rates. At root, the ZLB arises from a technological constraint on
the ability to pay or receive interest on physical cash, whether positive or negative. In principle, a
widely-used digital currency could mitigate, if not eliminate, that technological constraint by enabling interest
rates to be levied on retail monetary assets. How far it is able to do so will depend on the supply of physical
cash to the public, as well as any impact of the new regime on the financial system.26
The potential macro-economic benefits of easing the ZLB constraint appear to be significant. Studies prior to
the global financial crisis suggested the ZLB would bind infrequently and have only a modest
macroeconomic cost. With global real interest rates having since fallen, recent work suggests the ZLB could
bind much more frequently, between 20 and 40% of the time. That, in turn, could lead to significant shortfalls
in average output relative to potential (of around 2%) and average inflation relative to target (of as much as
2pp).27
The macro-economic costs of the ZLB constraint require thorough exploration. To be clear, what I am
discussing here is a structural shift in the monetary regime and carries no implications for the costs and
benefits of negative interest rates in the shorter-term. And these costs can of course be mitigated in others
ways, including through unconventional monetary policy tools and activist fiscal policy. Nonetheless, I
23
Kindleberger (2001).
24
Chamley et al (2012).
25
Kashyap et al (2002).
26
The Bank of England supplies cash to the public on demand.
27
See Kiley and Roberts (2017) and Coenen, Montes-Galdon and Smets (2020).
10
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believe it is important these potentially large macro-economic benefits of a digital currency are explored
when evaluating the case for a new monetary order. So far, that has not been the case.
The Evolving Lending Landscape
The second area I want to discuss is lending, in particular to SMEs. This, too, has been at the heart of what
makes banks special since the first Medici banks began serving Florentine merchants in the 14th century.
SMEs remain at the heart of the economy today, in the UK accounting for around 50% of GDP and 60% of
private sector employment.
For many decades, the market for SME lending has misfired, constraining the quantity and raising the price
of SME financing in ways which have hindered economic growth. That is not a criticism of either banks or
borrowers. Instead it reflects the fact that this market suffers from an especially acute problem of two-sided
information asymmetry.28
Small borrowers know a lot more about their business than lenders ever could. That is true of all borrowers,
of course. But the problem is particularly acute for SMEs, information on whom is typically not publically
available and for whom the only collateral is sometimes their business plan or the owner's house. Facing
this uncertainty, lenders have a natural tendency to demand a premium, or ration the supply, of SME finance.
A second information asymmetry arises because existing lenders know a lot more about their SME
customers than prospective new lenders. Without access to this information, the supply of finance from
alternative lenders is constrained and the scope for SME borrowers to shop around is limited. Acting
together, these information frictions have resulted in an SME lending market that, historically, has been
patchy and fragile.
In 1929, the Macmillan Commission was set up by the UK government to assess whether the financing
needs of SMEs were being met. It concluded decisively that they were not, with large and widespread
shortfalls in access to finance by UK companies of all sizes, but especially small, high-growth companies.
The so-called "Macmillan Gaps" were born.29
These gaps have persisted, perhaps even widened, in the period since. Corporate lending as a fraction of
UK banks' balance sheets
has fallen from over 60% in the 1950s to around 15% today (Chart 4). It has been
estimated that UK SMEs face an annual funding gap of over £20 billion.30 And what is true in aggregate
across the UK is even more acutely true within some of its regions, with sharp spatial disparities in the
distribution of SME finance (Chart 5).
28
Akerlof (1970).
29
The Macmillan Report (1931).
30
https://www.nao.org.uk/report/improving-access-to-finance-for-small-and-medium-sized-enterprises/
11
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Chart 4: Corporate lending as a fraction of total bank lending
0.7 PNFC
lending/total
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Source: Return from clearing banks collected from Macmillan Committee (1931), Bank of England Statistical Summaries (1937 and
1938), Roe (1971), Sheppard (1971), Bank of England.
Note: For 1930-1938, London Clearing Bank advances excluding lending to the public sector, financial companies, NPISH and Personal
and Professional sector as a share of total advances. For 1957-1966, UK Resident Bank advances to PNFCs as a share of total
advances. For 1963- M4 lending to PNFCs as a share of total M4 lending. This represents £ lending by banks and building societies
plus investments.
Chart 5: Regional disparities in availability of SME finance
Source: UK Finance, SME Update 2018; BEIS, Business Population Estimates 2018
These fragilities in SME lending have shown up most vividly at times of financial stress, during which the
the Global Financial Crisis, stress on banks' balance sheets
Macmillan gaps have tended to chasm. During
led to a sharp contraction in loan supply to SMEs by the main lenders, which persisted for years thereafter.
12
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More recently, SME financing gaps re-opened overnight during the Covid crisis when many companies found
themselves needing credit to tide over cashflow shortfalls. It was only when so-called Bounce-Back Loans to
any credit risk from banks' balance
SMEs were 100%-guaranteed by the Government, effectively removing
sheets, that SME lending flowed at pace and scale, with around 1 1⁄2 million loans to SMEs extended.
There are some signs innovation is making inroads into the MacMillan gaps. The number of new lenders to
SMEs has grown rapidly and new lenders account for most of the flow of new SME lending over the past half
a decade. Nonetheless, lending by new entrants remains modest as a fraction of the overall stock, at around
10%. And the incumbency bias towards larger lenders remains considerable. For example, almost all of the
Bounce-Back loans extended recently emanated from the major banks.
Surveys make clear the on-going frictions, on both the demand and supply sides, of the SME lending market.
More than 50% of SMEs consider only one provider when seeking a loan. A quarter are put off from
shopping around by the hassle or time. 60% of those who would like to borrow use personal funds instead.
70% would rather grow more slowly than borrow. And those SMEs seeking to switch lender face a 50%
higher chance of being rejected for a loan than existing customers.
Breaking down those well-entrenched barriers calls for a new infrastructure, one which expands the scale
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and scope of Open Banking an Open Data platform for SMEs. The Bank set out some ideas on the design
of such an open platform for SMEs earlier this year.31 This would provide a standardised means of
permissioned sharing of data about businesses. In addition to data held by banks, this could include data
from insurance and utilities companies, credit rating and social media data companies, and Government
sources such as the Passport Office, DVLA, HMRC and Companies House.
The platform would run as a decentralised network of data providers using a standardised set of APIs. There
would be no central data repository, physical credit file or central infrastructure. Instead, like the internet, the
platform would be built around standard protocols that would enable interoperability between decentralised
data providers and data users, with businesses having control of this process.
At a practical level this would mean an SME could, at the touch of a button, permission an API call to a
handful of data providers to instantly share specified data fields with a third-party, such as a lender. The
data transfer would be close to real time and encrypted end-to-end. This would greatly expand the dataset,
and shorten the application process, for SME loans.
Digital identification and verification through the platform would reduce KYC and AML checks, shortening
and simplifying the on-boarding process for SMEs to banks. Customers could cheaply and quickly compile
31
See https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/paper/2020/open-data-for-sme-finance
13
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and share their credit files with different providers, or indeed create personal financial passports, thereby
providing lenders with a richer and more timely basis for credit assessment.
For lenders, a less costly on-boarding and credit risk assessment process would lower materially many of the
supply-side barriers to SME finance. It would also potentially lower the barriers to entry among new,
innovative companies, thereby improving the contestability of the SME lending market and making it easier
for businesses to shop around.
While the case for such a platform was strong pre-Covid, the Covid crisis has materially strengthened the
case as a means of supporting the three R's. One legacy of the Covid crisis is that many corporates will
emerge with materially higher levels of debt. While many will be able to pay down these debts over time,
others may require some debt remediation or re-profiling. Indeed, in many cases this will make sense for
both the borrower and the lender.
Debt restructuring is a tortuous and time-intensive process, in large part due to the information frictions that
afflict the SME lending market in normal times. That problem is likely to be particularly acute today, given
t