Purpose and scope
The Engagement Forum (‘EF’) will provide a forum to engage senior stakeholders and gather strategic input on all non-technology aspects of central bank digital currency (‘CBDC’) from a diverse cross-section of expertise and perspectives. A UK CBDC, also known as a digital pound, would be a retail CBDC for use by households and businesses for their everyday payments, issued by the Bank of England (the ‘Bank’). The Bank and His Majesty’s Treasury (‘HM Treasury’) consider the digital pound is likely to be needed in the future, though no decision to introduce one has been taken at this stage. We are therefore stepping up development and moving to the design stage of our work.
The Bank and HM Treasury will use the EF to inform their approach to CBDC including policy considerations and functional requirements pertaining to CBDC. More generally, the EF and its outputs will have an important role in helping the Bank and HM Treasury understand the practical challenges of designing, implementing and operating a CBDC. There will be no obligation however, for the Bank or HM Treasury to act on the output of the EF or any working groups. The EF will not have any decision-making responsibilities, no formal advisory capacity nor will the Bank or HM Treasury be under any obligation to formally consult the EF. The EF will not replace the generally applicable mechanisms for consultation and engagement that the Bank and HM Treasury operate in fulfilment of their public law obligations and, where relevant, any statutory objectives.
By way of example, the EF will consider issues such as – but not limited to – ‘use cases’ for CBDC, functional needs of CBDC users, roles of public and private sectors in a CBDC system, financial & digital inclusion considerations, and data & privacy implications.
The EF will not routinely discuss CBDC technology issues, which will instead be considered in other forms of engagement.
Chair and secretariat
The EF will be co-chaired by Tom Mutton (Director of CBDC and Fintech at the Bank) and Clare Roberts (Director of CBDC at HM Treasury) (the ‘Co-Chairs’). The Bank and HM Treasury will jointly provide secretariat support for the EF (the ‘Secretariat’).
Membership
Membership in the EF is at the invitation of the Bank and HM Treasury. Members of the EF (‘Members’) will be drawn from the relevant range of CBDC stakeholders, such as financial institutions, civil society groups, merchants, business users and consumers. The selection process is set out in Annex 1 to this Terms of Reference.
The EF will comprise a diverse set of knowledgeable Members with relevant background and experience in working with retail payments. Members will be senior figures within their own organisations and have a strong understanding of the interests of their constituency. Membership is dependent on individuals having relevant expertise to be able to contribute to the discussions and commit their own time to the EF. A Member who steps down must seek the Bank’s permission to pass on their seat to a replacement within their organisation.
Given the importance attached to the input of named Members, the Co-Chairs expect Members to attend each EF meeting. In the event that Members are unable to attend a
meeting, they should seek the Bank’s permission to send an alternate from their organisation. Alternates must comply with this Terms of Reference.
Members may nominate staff with technical knowledge of retail payments from their organisations to act as the regular, day-to-day points of contact for the Secretariat and, where relevant, provide inputs for agendas and papers.
Working Groups
The Bank and HM Treasury will periodically place open requests-for-information (‘RFI’) on specific topics relevant to the CBDC design phase on their respective websites. Relevant CBDC stakeholders would be asked to submit a well-considered but brief response to the RFI and nominate a subject-matter expert who may be called upon for further discussion of the topic by way of participation in a temporary working group. The Bank and HM Treasury will review stakeholders’ responses and select individuals with relevant knowledge and expertise to participate in the working group. Responding stakeholders permit the Bank to share their RFI responses with the WG participants when constituted.
Working groups comprise of a mixture of subject-matter experts not on the EF and existing Members, where selected (‘WG participants’). WG participants will be asked to work together to consider the topics in the RFIs in further detail. They may also be asked to present their work to the EF. The Bank and HM Treasury expect to gain valuable insight from the work of these groups but are not bound by any recommendations the groups may make.
The Bank and HM Treasury expect to nominate one WG participant to be the leader of the working group and will ask them to coordinate the work of the group. Working groups would have flexibility as to their ways of working. However, we would expect the groups to gather regularly up to the delivery point of the presentation to the EF. A member of Bank or HM Treasury will attend the working groups’ meetings in an observer capacity and is not expected to lead or contribute to the output.
We would expect WG participants to commit their own time to the working groups, so applicants and nominees should ensure they have appropriate capacity before applying.
Whilst the working groups are separate from the EF, we expect WG participants to comply with the sections on conflicts of interest, intellectual property, competition law, confidentiality provisions and information-sharing in this Terms of Reference.
The Bank and HM Treasury do not expect to publish either submissions made in response to the RFI, nor the outputs of the working groups. Only a summarised description of the EF discussion of the working groups’ conclusions, as is the case with the EF’s published minutes today.
Participation in these working groups is conditional upon acceptance of these conditions.
Responsibilities and activities
The Bank and HM Treasury will engage the EF on material issues of relevance to the design phase of the digital pound round map. In this respect, Members are expected to offer frank and robust inputs on all non-technology aspects of the CBDC.
The Co-Chairs may invite Members to nominate themselves as lead discussants for certain topics. Subject-matter experts and observers who are not Members nor WG participants (‘external participants’) may also be invited to attend specific EF meetings and/or working groups if and when it is considered necessary at the discretion of the Co-Chairs. External participants must comply with this Terms of Reference.
The EF is not a decision-making body for the CBDC design phase, but its views will inform and play a role in the Bank and HM Treasury’s work on CBDC. The activities, discussions, and outputs of the EF should not be taken as an indication of future policy by the Bank or HM Treasury, or considered binding for future policy work or decisions.
Members are expected to:
- attend physical and/or virtual meetings as required, including working groups (where applicable), unless otherwise agreed with the Co-Chairs;
- provide technical, analytical, and business perspectives and inputs to the discussions;
- act in a personal capacity and contribute to the EF with a view to sharing perspectives that reflect their constituency as whole, rather than representing the views or interests of their individual organisations; and
- treat information disclosed or opinions expressed during EF meetings as confidential unless and until the EF has authorised their public release.
The Co-Chairs are responsible for:
- setting the strategy for the EF and shaping its forward agenda;
- guiding and moderating the discussions in meetings;
- inviting external participants to attend EF meetings and/or working groups, where appropriate; and
- obtaining Members’ agreement on any proposed outputs.
The Secretariat will be responsible for:
- the organisation and coordination of the EF’s activities, including timely circulation of minutes after meetings and publication of summary minutes on the Bank’s website;
- preparation of the agenda and materials for the meetings, which may incorporate input from Members; and
- co-ordinating any outreach to other market participants and stakeholders, if required.
The EF will meet for the duration of the design phase, approximately once a quarter. The Co-Chairs may need to vary the meeting frequency where circumstances demand it.
Members can request and/or suggest specific topics to be included in meeting or working group agendas. Any such request should be communicated to the Secretariat before the relevant meeting or working group to which the agenda relates. The final content of any agenda will be decided jointly by the Co-Chairs.
The Secretariat will share draft minutes of the discussions held during the meetings with Members before publication. Members may communicate any comments or edits on the content to the Secretariat within one week of receiving the summary. The final content of any meeting summary will be decided jointly by the Co-Chairs.
Reporting, confidentiality, and accountability
The Bank and HM Treasury are committed to being transparent about their work and the work of the EF. A summary of the minutes of discussions will be published after each meeting.
Interested parties who are not Members nor WG participants are welcome to send their views on topics discussed by the EF to cbdc@bankofengland.co.uk.
Any information provided or opinions expressed during EF meetings and/or working groups, will be treated as confidential unless and until the EF has authorised their public release. ‘Participants’ (which means Members, WG participants, external participants and any alternates) may be exposed to non-public information in the course of their work in the EF and/or working groups. Involvement of third parties in handling this material is strongly discouraged. Participants are expected to accept responsibility for ensuring that third parties are not able to access any information which is shared with them through the EF and/or working groups.
Where confidential information is used or disclosed by a Participant in the course of their participation in the EF and/or working groups, they agree to:
- keep such information secret and confidential;
- not use or exploit the information in any way except for the purposes of the EF and/or working groups as set out in this Terms of Reference;
- not directly or indirectly disclose or make available any such confidential information in whole or in part to any person, except as expressly permitted in writing by the Bank or HM Treasury, or in accordance with this Terms of Reference; and
- not to copy, reduce to writing or otherwise record confidential information except as strictly necessary for the purposes of the EF and/or working groups as set out in this Terms of Reference.
Participants acknowledge that the Bank and HM Treasury are subject to the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulation 2004 (EIRs).
Intellectual Property
The Bank and HM Treasury shall not acquire any right, title, or interest in or to Participant’s pre-existing Intellectual Property Rights (‘IPR’). It is the responsibility of the relevant Participant to draw attention to IPRs subsisting in information shared within the EF and/or working groups.
The Participants shall not acquire any right, title, or interest in or to the Bank’s and HM Treasury’s pre-existing IPRs.
The Participants shall have no right to use the Bank's and HM Treasury’s names, logos or trademarks, without either organisation’s prior written consent.
The Participants acknowledge and agree that newly created IPRs in the outputs (i.e. minutes, summaries, agenda, presentations) of the EF shall be owned by the Bank and HM Treasury.
The Participants grant the Bank and HM Treasury a perpetual, irrevocable, non-attributable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide and sub-licensable licence, to use (including but not limited to the right to load, execute, store, transmit, display and copy) IPRs contained:
- in any new products (e.g. papers, presentations) created by the Participants for the EF and/or working groups, and
- any pre-existing IPR in the product which is necessary for the Bank and HM Treasury to enjoy the use of the product in the furthering of both organisation’s work on a UK CBDC.
The Bank and HM Treasury grants to the Participant a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free, non-transferable licence to use outputs of the EF for internal use within the Participant’s organisation for non-commercial purposes.
Should the Bank or HM Treasury wish to further develop particular ideas or outputs from the EF and/or working groups, they are required to comply with public procurement law and shall not be fettered in their discretion to seek and enter into appropriate commercial agreements accordingly.
Relationship to the wider CBDC work programme and other engagement groups
Views from the EF will be fed into the Bank and HM Treasury’s wider work programme on CBDC. The Co-Chairs will be responsible for representing the EF’s views inside their respective organisations, including sharing them with relevant decision-making bodies.
The issues raised by the EF may inform the topics considered by other engagement groups (for example, the CBDC Academic Advisory Group), and vice versa. The minutes of other engagement groups will be made available to Members via the Bank’s website.
Conflicts of interest, competition law and information-sharing
Participants are responsible for identifying financial or other interests that could create or be seen to create a conflict of interest as a Participant of the EF, as soon as they arise. This includes reviewing the forward agenda and identifying and declaring any conflicts of interest to the Secretariat before every meeting. If a Participant finds that a conflict of interest becomes apparent only as the meeting progresses, the nature of the conflict should be declared as soon as practicable to the Co-Chairs. The Co-Chairs will then decide how the conflict should be managed, including whether the Participant should:
- leave the meeting during discussions relating to the conflicted matter;
- stay in the meeting but not participate in the discussion; or
- stay in the meeting and participate freely.
It is the responsibility of each Participant to ensure they understand and comply with their obligations under all applicable competition law. To the extent that any Participant is unclear about these, they should seek legal advice and if appropriate arrange to undertake competition law compliance training or seek further guidance at their respective organisations.
Participants may request further protections for any data and information shared with the EF. Participants may make requests either by communicating the request (i) directly to the Bank and HM Treasury or (ii) to the Members and Co-Chairs for discussion at the next EF meeting.
It is the responsibility of any Participant to ensure that they are satisfied with the level of protection for any information shared by them. If they are not satisfied, then it is the Participant’s responsibility to not share any such information.
Data protection
Why we need your personal data
In the application for membership of the EF, the Bank and HM Treasury collect personal data about you. This data includes your name, work email address, professional information, and opinions. We may also collect this information from individuals or organisations who nominate an individual for membership of the EF. We will also collect views and opinions shared by individuals participating in meetings for the EF.
What we do with your personal data
We will use the information for the purpose of reviewing EF membership applications, to communicate with Members and unsuccessful applicants about future membership opportunities. To ensure that the external engagement on CBDC is transparent, the names and company affiliations of Members will be published on the Bank and HM Treasury websites. We will process personal data where necessary for the performance of tasks carried out in the public interest.
How we store your personal data
We will keep your personal data in line with our retention policies, please see ‘More information’ for details.
Your privacy rights
You have a number of rights under data protection laws. For example, you have the right to ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you. This is known as a ‘Subject Access Request.’ You can ask us to change how we process or deal with your personal data, and you may also have the right in some circumstances to have your personal data amended or request that we no longer use your personal data and have it deleted.
More information
For further information about how HM Treasury processes personal data or to contact the Data Protection Officer please see HM Treasury's Personal Information Charter.
To find out more about how the Bank protects the privacy of the individuals whose data we process and to contact the Bank’s Data Protection Officer, please see Privacy and the Bank of England.
Disclaimer
Neither the Bank nor HM Treasury, or any of their staff, officials, or representatives, including but not limited to the Co-Chairs and Secretariat, are responsible for any views or statements expressed by other Participants.
Views expressed by the EF in its outputs may not reflect the views of the Bank or HM Treasury. The activities, discussions, and outputs of the EF should not be taken as an indication of future policy by the Bank or HM Treasury. The Bank and HM Treasury policy positions will continue to be developed and communicated in accordance with the usual governance and public consultation procedures of the two organisations.
Annex 1: Membership selection process and criteria
Selection process
The Bank and HM Treasury may occasionally place a call for interest for new Members to join the EF. We are currently not seeking applications for membership.
Applicants are asked to provide a brief summary (no more than 500 words) of their role and experience, as well as their suitability to join the EF and their interest in CBDC. Applicants are also asked to provide a specific example (no more than 250 words) of a challenge related to the potential use of CBDC in their organisation or constituency.
The Bank and HM Treasury review all applications and, using the below criteria, select new Members to join the EF. In addition to these criteria the Bank and HM Treasury consider the overall balance of the forum in terms of representation of sectors, areas of expertise and individual characteristics.
- Knowledge and experience. Members should be a knowledgeable and experienced professional from academia, law, a civil society group, a financial services firm, an organisation active in retail or the digital economy, a trade or consumer representative body, a think-tank, a registered charity, or non-government organisation. They should have first-hand professional experience working with retail payments or access to financial services, and/or of shaping and delivering relevant large-scale change programmes.
- Understanding of policy perspective. It is preferable if the Member can demonstrate understanding of policy issues related to the use of CBDC in the UK economy.
- Resources. It is important that the Member is able to commit sufficient time and resources to the EF. The required commitment will include attendance at meetings four times per year, as well as additional working groups (as required), and preparatory work. Note that the Bank and HM Treasury have now published requests for information on selected topics associated with the development of the digital pound.
- Diversity. They should contribute to the overall diversity of Members and the institutions they come from. The EF reflects diversity in all its forms both in terms of individuals and also the organisations that they work for, so that the EF may draw on a rich variety of knowledge and experiences amongst its Members. On an individual level, the EF seeks to be representative of the gender and ethnic diversity of the UK population and seek to incorporate Members of different backgrounds to support diversity of thought. On an organisational level, a variety of organisations based on size, geography (reaching all regions of the UK), or nature of business may be selected.
Members or their deputies are encouraged to submit responses to these requests and join or lead the subsequent workshops formed by the Bank and HM Treasury to explore these topics in more detail. Members will also need to provide input into meeting and workshop agendas and papers (potentially at working level from within their organisations).
Composition and participation
Members are expected to represent organisations from a range of sectors, including (but not limited to):
- Academia
- Law
- Banking and financial services
- Consumer and civil society representative groups
- Fintechs
- Merchants
- Non-Governmental Organisations / Think Tanks
- Payment companies
- Technology companies
- Trade bodies