that mission. improved cognitive diversity helps make for better decision making. the lack of such diversity has been highlighted as one important factor in the bank and regulatory failures of 2008. 5 having a diverse range of institutions and business models brings positive benefits for financial system resiliency6 – something that you will not be surprised to hear matters a great deal to the bank of england! 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. similarly, our market intelligence helped ensure that the other elements of the policy response last year were also rapid, decisive and well calibrated to the underlying risks. of course, diversity has affected our other outreach activity too. when i first started working at the bank of england in the mid - 1980s, the bank ’ s only public statements came mainly from the governor for instance at the annual mansion house speech. we have moved a long way since then, and we see outreach as core to how we operate. in an important sense this change naturally accompanied the decisive shift to the bank having clear and independent responsibility for monetary policy and the stability of the financial system. with those responsibilities went

##england. co. uk / news / speeches the response to the great financial crisis has been the largest, most comprehensive set of reforms to the governance of the international financial sector that we have seen. new international standards ensure that banks engaged in cross border activity are far more resilient. they have more and better quality capital to absorb losses and much greater reserves of liquidity to withstand stress. the development of resolution regimes and an international standard for loss absorbency in resolution makes it far more possible for international banks to fail without endangering the whole financial system. otc derivatives, a key amplifier of the stress and largely unregulated and unreported before the crisis, are now transparent and collateralised – an additional $ 1trillion is now held globally against all derivatives trades. a raft of measures have moved shadow banking into the light, eliminating its toxic elements and ensuring more resilient market based finance. and, perhaps most importantly, the crisis led to a reformed governance structure with the creation of the financial stability board ( fsb ), accountable to both the g20 finance ministers and governors and to the g20 leaders. the fsb brings together the central banks, regulators, and finance ministries of jurisdictions representing around 90 % of the global financial system. it has a broad mandate to promote financial stability, monitor and assess risks, and coordinate standard setting bodies to ensure no regulatory gaps. the fsb has driven the great reform programme to address the fault lines exposed by the crisis. that programme is largely complete and in its implementation phase. we cannot and do not need to be forever in a post crisis reform phase. but, looking forward, there is always the danger that we fall behind again. the progress we have made in governance since the crisis gives us the ability to prevent this from happening. we have far better institutional machinery today, through the fsb and g20 to bring governance into line with new risks and challenges before rather than after a crisis. the fsb ’ s work on cryptoassets in 2018 is a good example. the g20 identified the rapid growth of cryptoassets as a potential problem and tasked the fsb with analysing the risks posed. in the space of less than a year the fsb concluded that cryptoassets did not currently pose financial stability risks. but it also put in place a monitoring framework to ensure that this assessment is kept current and keeps pace with rapid developments in this area. the fsb also