Alastair Wilson
Head of Financial Institutions Division,
Financial Stability*
How does your work support the Bank’s core purposes?
The Bank has two core purposes. The first is the achievement of monetary stability and the second is achieving financial stability. My division at the moment is responsible for both. We implement the monetary policy operations which are central to monetary stability and to achieving the MPC’s [Monetary Policy Committee] objectives. And we also settle the liquidity-providing operations, which are central to the achievement of financial stability both in general, but most specifically over the past couple of years during the financial crisis, where we have been responsible for implementing many of the changes to the Bank’s operations as a consequence of the crisis.
What does your department do?
My department is called Market Services division. It’s an eclectic division… carries out a number of different operations and that’s part of the fun of running it. The first thing we do is we operate the Real Time Gross Settlement, the RTGS processor, which is an extremely important piece of IT. It’s the IT on which the UK’s payment system operates. And it settles between five hundred billion and a trillion pounds worth of payments each day. So you can see it’s an extremely important piece of kit.
The second function is that we’re the Bank’s securities back office. We settle all the Bank’s official open market operations, including those which implement monetary policy on behalf of the MPC and those which provide liquidity to individual banks and to the banking sector. So we’ve been pretty busy for the last couple of years.
The third thing that we do is that we operate the risk function – the Operational and Credit Implementation Risk function, which supports all of Banking Services’ customer and official operations.
Tell us about your career with the Bank so far.
Well, I’ve been at the Bank for more than 20 years. I joined in 1989 as a graduate. I had studied Politics and Economics, so I wasn’t a specialist – and I’m not a specialist. I was attracted initially by the variety that the Bank offered – by its emphasis on people being moved around to develop fully rounded central bankers. It was the variety which brought me to the Bank and it’s the variety which has kept me at the Bank for 20 years.
Over the course of my career, I’ve made the conscious decision to work in both analytical and operational areas to develop the full range of skills and knowledge that I need to move up within the organisation.
When I first joined the Bank, I worked in our Banking Supervision division, supervising Middle Eastern banks. It was an extremely interesting time because it was the time of the first Gulf War.
I then became a personal assistant to the Markets Director, which gave me an insight both into how the Bank operates at very senior levels and into its market operations.
From there it was a natural step into what was then called the Banking department, now Banking Services, carrying out business analysis and working as one of the managers on a major project to implement a new government bonds settlement system into the UK.
From there it was an equally natural step up to work in our Financial Stability area, helping develop my own and the Bank’s expertise into the market infrastructure – the trading, clearing, settlement and payment systems on which the financial markets and the UK’s economy rely.
I had a brief stint in our Foreign Exchange division before becoming Head of Division for Market Services, which is what I’ve done for the past five years.
My next role is to set up a new division, again in Financial Stability, which will be called the Financial Institutions division. My role will be to lead the Bank’s understanding of the fragility, the resilience of the banking sector and of some of the major banks within that sector.
What does your typical day look like?
Well as a Head of Division within the Bank, there’s not really a typical day. Every day is different, and it’s that diversity which keeps us all interested, and keeps us all coming into the Bank each morning. We find ourselves, I find myself dealing with a wide range of people within the Bank – dealing with staff questions, with project questions, helping people guide, lead on policy developments, trying to make our operations work better.
I also find myself dealing with a wide range of people outside of the Bank in the markets, talking to them about the state of the markets and about the pressures they face. And even overseas – talking to overseas institutions and central banks about policy developments relevant to the UK’s financial markets and the global financial markets.
What makes the Bank a special place to work?
The last two years have been extremely challenging but have demonstrated, both to us within the Bank and to the people outside, the importance of what the Bank does. It’s been exceptionally hard work – routine has gone out of the window. We’ve lost weeks, weekends supporting the changes that the Bank has needed to make to its operations to respond to the financial crisis to support institutions and markets. But it really has demonstrated to us why we come into work each morning – just why what we do is so important to the financial sector and to the UK.
To me, one of the special things about the Bank is the way it combines rigour and professionalism with encouraging its staff to maintain an acceptable work/life balance. It attracts extremely intelligent people and it places a great deal of emphasis on intellectual rigour and on people being very clear thinking.
It’s a very challenging, stimulating environment. But it’s also an environment which allows you to maintain a certain amount of space between your work life and your home life. I’ve got two children, my wife works full time. In order to allow us to spend the time that we think we need with our children, I work from home one day a week, as does she. I either drop the children off or pick them up three days a week.
My working pattern very much fits my own choices. I’m an early bird so I’m in early, typically around seven o’clock. But I leave early as well. I’m normally gone by five o’clock or shortly afterwards. Despite being a Head of Division, the Bank allows me to do that. It’s a very supportive employer.
* At the time of filming, Alastair was Head of the Market Services Division.