Diversity in who we speak to in financial markets has even more direct benefits. It improves our understanding of what is driving markets, what people expect from future policy and the potential impacts of different decisions. And that is critical – because financial markets are global, complex and interconnected. A failure to understand those diverse components heightens the chances of making analytical, and hence policy, mistakes. Speaking to only one subset of banks, for example, could mean policy calibrations have unintended consequences for different market participants. Only looking at established financial assets risks ignoring the impact of innovation. And speaking only to contacts of similar backgrounds could mean missing different perspectives 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  on potential risks to consensus views. Having that breadth of diverse perspectives allows us to act more quickly and decisively in a crisis too. In March last year, financial market stress caused by COVID-19 across the world led to investors looking for safe haven assets and cash. The conversations we had with market participants like you during this period were essential to building a picture of what was happening across a wide range of different markets, and assessing the steps we, and other public authorities, needed to take to maintain economic and financial stability. To take one example, the intelligence we gathered from you about the stress in the commercial paper market helped the Bank and HM Treasury to plan, design and launch the COVID Corporate Funding Facility in record time, and ensured it was priced appropriately.

The update of our Market Intelligence Charter and the UK Money Markets Code, published today, will embed diverse outreach into our working practices and help make diversity within financial markets a core standard of best practice. The Charter sets out our aims and ambitions of talking to a diverse range of contacts and affirms our commitment to open engagement, with an emphasis on challenge and diversity of thought.9 The updated Code, which the FCA have recently again recognised as an industry standard, puts the expectation to promote and develop a diverse team upfront, alongside other core principles of best practice, highlighting the benefits of accessing a wider range of skills and thinking. 10 This approach is also being in embedded in our outward-facing markets committees. We currently have two main committees: the Money Markets Committee and the FX Joint Standing Committee. We have been working with members from both committees to diversify their membership for some time now: including working to ensure women in senior roles are represented; and that the committees see a wider range of presenters at different stages of the career. This is yielding results: specifically, female representation – which is one aspect of diversity that has been historically lacking on many senior-level committees – is now approaching half on the UK Money Markets Committee, and has climbed to around a third for the FX Joint Standing Committee in the past 18 months. These changes were driven by the Bank but importantly with the full support of the external members.