historical eras, as perhaps the current one is, marked by social and political crisis − this is to the detriment of everyone. and it is of no use for researchers to rebel against the mounting obscurantism by proudly reiterating the established rules. society as a whole might trust them even less as a result. in other words, making discoveries, innovating, and developing theories and techniques will not suffice. to keep or regain the public ’ s trust the findings of research must be explained to those outside the field, humbly and patiently and without the haughtiness sometimes displayed by those who are proud of their hard - won knowledge. technical jargon must be meticulously translated into plain, everyday language, trying to reduce as much as possible the inevitable loss of accuracy that any translation of this kind implies. the day after the meeting between the presidents of the united states and of russia, which took place on 16 july 2018, the french political scientist dominique moisi gave an interview to corriere della sera, which the journalist summarized in the headline : ‘ more than diplomacy, this is marketing ’. corriere della sera, 17 july 2018. eichengreen, barry, 2017, the populist temptation, oxford university press, oxford. viale, riccardo, ‘ politics versus science – terrible examples from our past ’, corriere della sera, 9 august 2018. in short, we must popularize. but we must do so without ever losing touch with rigorous reasoning and cold, hard facts. at the same time, we must aim for simplicity and clarity in our explanations, no matter how complex the issues at hand. the popularization of economics but what does this mean in practice? let me give you an example of an inaccurate and misleading myth about the italian economy, which would benefit greatly from a fair account of the facts, that is, from good popularization. according to this myth, the italian economy could be prosperous and happy if only europe, out of teutonic foolishness, and the market, out of occasional political antipathy, did not impose a financial straitjacket on it. in this oversimplified narrative, there are grains of truth and mountains of lies. the issues are much more entangled and complicated, and it is up to those who have spent a long time studying these problems to make this clearly understood. for now, let ’ s clarify one thing : the main problem with the

the bank of england ’ s fintech accelerator : what have we done and what have we learned? remarks given by andrew hauser, executive director, banking, payments and financial resilience at a meeting for fintech contacts of the bank of england ’ s agency for the south east and east anglia at the offices of mills & reeve, cambridge 6 october 2017 i am grateful to sharmista appaya and the financial accelerator team for their help and assistance in preparing these remarks. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches introduction it is a pleasure to be with you here in cambridge to talk about the bank of england ’ s work on financial technology ( ‘ fintech ’ ) – and to hear from you about the latest developments in your businesses. it is sometimes said that the uk ’ s thriving technology sector is all about london. but nothing could be further from the truth. forty - four of the uk ’ s 100 fastest - growing technology firms are based elsewhere in the country. and some of the most exciting of all are right here in cambridge – and speak regularly to our excellent local bank of england agency team, phil eckersley, tim pike and alex golledge. in fact, i have first - hand knowledge of cambridge ’ s long and proud history of hi - tech innovation, having grown up only a short distance from here, at the height of the 1980s personal computer boom centred around acorn and sinclair. as a somewhat nerdy child, i attended an inspirational maths and computing club at homerton college where we learned, amongst other things, how to do recursive coding using a robot turtle. we purloined one of the earliest local area networks for our ramshackle school computer shed. and i had a holiday job at the cambridge science park – right at the start of its astonishing growth story. i recall one particularly memorable experience working on a robot designed to extract the meat from shellfish : let ’ s just say the results were messy! fintech and the bank of england nearly three decades on, my current role in charge of the bank ’ s banking and payments infrastructure gives me a bird ’ s eye view of how technology is transforming financial services. from the very visible application of the latest mobile technology in retail banking, to the much less visible but just as important application of cloud computing, cryptographic techniques and ultra - high speed processors to the wholesale and back office functions that keep the financial markets running.