Victoria Saporta: Prudential bank regulation - present and future

Speech by Ms Victoria Saporta, Executive Director for Prudential Policy of the Bank of England, at the Westminster Business Forum Keynote Seminar "Building a resilient UK financial sector - next steps for prudential regulation, structural reform and mitigating risks", London, 4 July 2018.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Introduction

I am pleased to be here today to give this speech. The Westminster Business Forum has a fascinating agenda - from policy priorities for UK manufacturing, to the development of FinTech, even the future of the UK space industry! And your roots are in Parliament, which gives the Bank of England its objectives to maintain monetary and financial stability.

Today is also a special day for me personally.

Exactly two years ago, on 4 July 2016, I was appointed in my current role as Executive Director for Prudential Policy.

As only 10 days had passed from the EU referendum, I was anticipating that I would be spending significant amounts of my time thinking about how to approach prudential policy during a period of uncertainty over the UK's future relationship with the EU.

I had not anticipated, however, that the finalisation of Basel III, which at the time was expected to be agreed by the Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision in January 2017, would be delayed by another 11 months, during which time a number of people would doubt whether it would be finalised at all.