Way back in 2015, The Bank of England had warned that 15 mln jobs were at risk in Britain due to robots and artificial intelligence. It would appear that the future is arriving sooner than we would have thought.

It is now the UK’s central bank itself that is trying out its hand at artificial intelligence and the Blockchain. As these technologies evolve, Bank of England has joined forces with Blockchain and artificial intelligence experts so as to keep itself relevant.

Launch of a new community

In a press release, Bank of England announced that they have launched a new community which would bring together fintech related organizations.

The three stated aims of this community are: to share developments, trends and insights, to make sure the bank is engaging with different fintech firms from across the sector and to enable firms with an interest in fintech to network, supporting the development of the sector. The Bank will meet with members of this community between two to four times a year and they will share updates on ‘trends and developments’ in the sector.

Bank of England also plans to hold quarterly networking and knowledge-sharing events and will be publishing summaries of the topics that are discussed at these meetings. It has published a full list of the members of the community and these include PwC, BBA, Bitsight, Enforcd, Thomson Reuters and others.

Joining forces with experts

In addition to the formation of this community, the central bank has also joined forces with experts in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) field. They will be using MindBridge’s AI auditor which will help detect anomalies in transactions and reports by utilizing data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The stated aim of this exercise is to “explore benefits of machine learning for analyzing the quality of regulatory data input.”

In addition to the Canada-based MindBridge, Bank of England will also be working with Ripple by carrying out a proof of concept to demonstrated synchronized movement of two different currencies across two different real-time gross settlement systems.

With this, the Bank of England hopes it would be able to show that settlement risk can be reduced and an improvement made in the speed and efficiency of cross-border payments.

Banks need to improve their game

Banks are still stuck in the stone age as far as technology is concerned. It still takes days to move money from one part of the world to another and if speed is what you desire, then it is mighty expensive.

Wire transfer companies, banks and other organizations are finally exploring ways and means to adopt new technology.

The only question that remains unanswered is if they would be able to adopt this new technology before new-age fintech firms and technologies render them irrelevant.