3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  3  The specific aims of the Forum are: firstly, to share information and understand the practical challenges of using AI in financial services, identify existing or potential barriers to deployment, and consider any potential risks or trade-offs; secondly, to gather views on areas where principles, guidance, or regulation could support safe adoption of these technologies; and finally, to consider whether once the forum has completed its work ongoing industry input could be useful and if so, what form this could take. Those aims underline the fact that AI is a deep and multi-faceted field requiring a coordinated and collaborative approach from regulators. The knowledge, experience, and expertise of the Forum’s members and observers will be invaluable in helping us to contextualise and frame the Bank’s thinking on AI, its benefits, its risk and challenges, and any possible future policy initiatives. The AI Public-Private Forum is committed to being transparent and will publish summary reports of all Forum and workshop discussions. It will also aim to deliver a final report of its findings and conclusions. However, the outputs of the Forum should not be considered as an indication of future policy by the Bank or the FCA. By being as open and transparent in our approach as possible, and by sharing the information of the Forum publically with all its stakeholders, including other regulators, we hope to further the collective dialogue on how best to support safe adoption of AI in financial services.

First, increasing the number and diversity of firms that can directly access central bank money helps to reduce financial stability risk from events such as market wide shocks or a single firm failure. Second, it promotes competition and innovation in payments. Firms that have direct access to payment systems can benefit from faster transaction times and reduced individual transaction costs. By extending these benefits to a wider range of firms, the Bank hopes to encourage a greater diversity of players in the payments market, thereby encouraging innovation and competition through development of new business models, new products and services and ultimately cheaper and more efficient payments. This is an ambitious Programme - and rightly so. The Bank is on track against published milestones. Having defined the Programme scope, with input from the payments industry, we are now running a competitive procurement process under the Official Journal of the European Union to appoint a Technology Delivery Partner. They will work with the Bank on the design and build of the core settlement engine. We plan to enter the contract with the Technology Delivery Partner in May 2020. 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  5  We then move to delivery, with the first technology changes in the first half of 2022. In light of other international migration plans, the Bank is revisiting its approach to the introductory phase of ISO 20022 implementation in 2022 – in particular on how we can support early adopters of enhanced ISO 20022 data.