In her introduction, Jana Mackintosh, MD, Payments, Innovation and Resilience, UK Finance, noted importance and benefits of collaboration between the industry and its stakeholders, and that the speakers for the evening would share great examples of how industry can deliver well when there is collaboration and absolute alignment.

Collaboration to enhance end user outcomes

Sarah Jordan, Director Payments Regulation & Financial Crime Forensic Practice at Deloitte, set out the key regulatory topics and areas of focus based on her industry experience and insights at Deloitte.

While these would all require industry collaboration, she noted the specific opportunity in addressing financial crime to improve end user outcomes. Collaboration here is critical and has the power to make a real difference to consumers and businesses is the ongoing fight against financial crime.

Payments – it’s all change

Victoria Cleland, Executive Director for Payments, Bank of England provided the keynote address. She built on the theme of collaboration: its integral role in achievements to date and its continued importance as the Bank takes forward its RTGS Renewal programme.

In setting out examples of good collaboration, she noted UK Finance and the Bank working in partnership earlier this year on a payments prioritisation framework for use during sever operational disruption. For this initiative the industry and the Bank identified the most urgent payments, such as benefits payments, for prioritisation to minimise customer vulnerability and support the resilience of the financial system during possible disruption.

For Victoria, the date of the summer reception was timely:  on 19 June 2023 (exactly a month and a day before), the industry reached an important milestone migrating CHAPS (the UK’s high-value payment system) to ISO 20022, the global financial messaging standard. The success was the result of sustained collaboration, she noted, between the Bank, CHAPS Direct Participants, their customers, and vendors. It required significant planning, system design and testing from all institutions: a clear example of bringing together industry’s expertise, commitment, and collaboration.

In her speech, Victoria highlighted the four key areas where the renewed RTGS will deliver benefits to industry: increased resilience, greater access, wider interoperability, and improved user functionality. The migration to ISO 20022 was the first major step in realising this vision, which will not only improve domestic payments but also enhance cross-border payments. Unlocking these benefits will only be possible, she noted, with continued close collaboration with the payments industry.

Victoria’s full speech can be found here - Payments: it’s all change

Industry collaboration - a key objective for the PPSB and UK Finance

Steve Allen, Managing Director, COO, Corporate Banking & Payments, Barclays, in his capacity as the chair of the Payments Product and Services Board at UK Finance reiterated the continued need for collaboration. He also reflected on the industry’s busy change agenda and the work started by UK Finance to build a more cohesive view of industry developments to inform the effective and efficient delivery of priorities. Building on this, Steve  announced that UK Finance would be  partnering with Deloitte to further develop the payments industry roadmap, which would also be used to help inform the industry response to the Treasury’s Future of Payments Review.

Steve closed by thanking Deloitte for their hospitality and thanking the speakers for sharing their insights.

Continuing collaboration

In taking forward the ambition for the payments sector UK Finance will continue to support industry and work in partnership with our stakeholders to the benefit of customers and businesses - with collaboration central to our approach.