thresholds mapped against number of banks by size, up to £50b ( deposit - takers ) sources : snl capital iq, crr, bcbs, pra rulebook, eba technical standards, supervisory statements, and statements of policy. note : only includes thresholds that are either set using assets / deposits values, or can be translated into assets / deposits values. the y - axis corresponds to the proportion of thresholds / banks below the £ value for assets / deposits on the x - axis. i invite views on this picture, but offer two preliminary observations myself. first, as everyone in banking knows, by number we have a concentration of firms at relatively low asset sizes. whether this is a result of proportionality – our efforts to lower barriers to entry – or barriers to growth is a key question. second, more novel if perhaps less fundamental : there appear to be minor discontinuities around the thresholds of £5b, £10b and £25b, and a more substantial flattening and bump at £50b. these may be worth investigating further. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches complexity another thing we ’ ve been looking at afresh is the complexity of our prudential rules. the scale of the global financial crisis resulted in part from the huge complexity of the financial system, and the many gaps in the rules that sought to regulate it. fixing these gaps required more regulatory constraints and more regulatory discretion – a necessary increase in ‘ essential ’ regulatory complexity. 5 but when should we start worrying about ‘ too much ’ complexity? this is important for at least two reasons : first, excessive complexity may well be counter - productive in terms of our safety and soundness objective6 ; and second, complexity may be anti - competitive if it is harder for small firms to bear the cost of mastering it. designing a framework to trade off costs and benefits of complexity is an emerging research question. but there ’ s a complementary, empirical step : we have wanted to measure the framework ’ s complexity – to say how complex it is. legal and linguistic scholarship suggests the information burden of understanding individual rules, as well as the nature of the interactions between them, both matter here. the measurement debate tends to start with the simple metric of length : how long are our rules? our robot has run the numbers on prudential regulation for banks and tells me that there were about 700, 000 words

management, not ordinary people with deposits in banks. and finally it means making sure that if you take out an insurance contract, it will pay out if whatever you are insuring against happens. the work that the bank does in all of these areas can ultimately be summed up very simply : we maintain confidence in money. this confidence is not, though an end in itself ; it is a means to an end. confidence in money provides the foundations for prosperity. without it, companies would struggle to provide the goods and services we all use every day ; you would face difficulties in knowing how to invest for your futures, be it financing studies or buying a house. maintaining this confidence is the best contribution the bank of england can make to the good of the people of the united kingdom. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches building public understanding of what the bank does – by engaging with people directly – is essential to our work. that ’ s because our policies work better if our objectives are clear and the british people have confidence that we will do the right thing whatever happens. improving understanding of the bank ’ s role is also part of being accountable to the people we serve. the bank is at the heart of the uk economy. the responsibilities parliament has given us are wide - ranging and the decisions we take affect everyone in the country. people deserve the information and tools to judge how well we are doing our job and to know that we are listening to your views. today ’ s event is also part of a wider effort by the bank to move beyond traditional modes of communication to speak more directly to the people we serve. while three hundred thousand people read the financial times, there are 30 million facebook users in the uk. and while everyone knows it is good to talk, the bank is learning how it can also be good to tweet – our twitter account has 227, 000 followers, though that still leaves us a little behind wayne rooney ’ s 16. 7 million. we are revamping our publications to make them more accessible, using icons and graphics to convey our messages on webpages designed for mobiles and tablets, rather than relying only on pages of words on paper. you can take a look at our first example of this – the november inflation report – online, at www. inflationreport. co. uk. this afternoon ’ s event will showcase a selection of the materials we are planning to run alongside these changes in our communications