The Bank of England is opening the fourth round of applications to the FinTech Accelerator, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, said recently.

Speaking at the International FinTech Conference 2017, Old Billingsgate, on April 12th, Carney said that the central bank is seeking to work on new proofs of concept on maintaining privacy in a distributed ledger and applying a range of big data tools to support its analysis.

“New technologies could transform wholesale payments, clearing and settlement. In particular, distributed ledger technology [DLT or blockchain] could yield significant gains in the accuracy, efficiency and security of such processes, saving tens of billions of pounds of bank capital and significantly improving the resilience of the system”, Carney said.

He further revealed the bank’s initiatives in the blockchain space. Carney said that the bank has successfully completed its own proof of concept aimed at distinguishing the technology’s potential from its hype. In addition, the BoE is a member of Hyperledger along with private market participants and tech firms.

Carney went on to say that the bank also seeks to make its next generation RTGS compatible with settlement in a distributed ledger.

The BoE established the FinTech Accelerator last year and has worked with a number of firms on proofs of concept ranging from strengthening its cyber security to using artificial intelligence (AI) for regulatory data, and improving its understanding of distributed ledgers.