crisis in part because the shari ’ a prohibits the excess leverage and speculative financial activities that were at its root. they also take comfort from the fact that many participants in conventional finance, as well as regulators, and policymakers have begun to ask whether there are lessons to be learned from the principles of islamic finance which might help avoid future crises. recent events have certainly created a great opportunity for the islamic financial industry. at the same time, however, there is no room for complacency and if the industry is to make the most of the opportunity that has now arisen it will need to ensure that the lessons of the crisis are fully learned. some of these lessons are quite general and apply equally to conventional and to islamic finance. central bankers and regulators have learned that they must pay more attention to risks that are common throughout an entire sector of the industry. these risks might not be immediately apparent from reviewing the balance sheet or financial statements of an individual institution. an example of such a risk is when all banks assume that they can exit their speculative positions at the same time. this requires them to assume that financial markets will always remain as liquid as they are in normal times. but if every financial institution is operating on the same assumption, then the point at which everyone tries to rush to the exit will be the point at which financial markets cease to function. there will be only sellers and no buyers. this is what happened in conventional finance when banks invested in structured financial instruments like cdos and clos which they then found they couldn ’ t sell at any price. now some people might believe that because islamic financial institutions cannot invest in cdos and clos, they must be immune to this problem. but think about the exposure of many islamic banks to the real estate market. it might be a reasonable assumption for an individual institution that it could exit profitably a property development that it is funding. but when many other institutions are making similar assumptions about the projects they are funding, the industry as a whole may find it difficult to exit its investments without substantial losses or within a reasonable time - frame. a further lesson of the crisis is specific to the work of the accounting standard setters and thus to aaoifi. this lesson relates to the importance of disclosure and transparency. good disclosures ensure that risks can be clearly identified and that market counterparties are able to form a considered view of the value of financial instruments and investments. the financial crisis involved multiple failures of disclosure and transparency. for example,

risk on the largest payments flows – the ones most likely to threaten financial stability by bringing down the system if they failed. but that is not the only innovation that rtgs has delivered over the years. as the financial system has evolved, rtgs has been regularly updated, introducing a raft of new functions and risk mitigants to respond to changing demands. today, we are announcing that the bank has completed, or agreed steps that will complete, all the actions in response to the deloitte report 4 published in march last year following the rtgs outage in october 2014. looking forward, as we celebrate rtgs ’ twentieth birthday during 2016, it is again time to ask fundamental questions about the shape of the bank ’ s settlement operations. the way payments are made has changed dramatically in recent years, reflecting changes in the needs of households and companies, changes in technology, and an evolving regulatory landscape. the range of payment providers is growing rapidly. given the implications of these changes for the bank ’ s mission and for users, businesses and regulators, it is important that the bank consider how rtgs will need to evolve to meet and shape payments trends in the coming decades. that is why we are today announcing our plan to design a blueprint for a new heart that can support the future demands placed on the uk ’ s high - value sterling settlement system. in my remaining remarks tonight i want to do three things. first, set out some of the key drivers of change. second, explain some of the strategic questions we want to ask on the future role of rtgs. and, third, set out how we will go about developing a blueprint for a new high value payments system. either directly in the case of high - value payments made via chaps, or indirectly after netting in the case of retail payments made via the various private sector schemes. the deloitte report on the october 2014 rtgs outage can be found here : http : / / www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / documents / news / 2015 / rtgsdeloitte. pdf. an update on the completion of the recommendations of the deloitte report can be found here : http : / / www. bankofengland. co. uk / markets / documents / paymentsystems / deliotteactions. pdf. bis central bankers ’ speeches evolution in the payments landscape much has changed in the uk payments landscape in the past twenty years. in particular, i want