IBS Journal May 2017
39
no legacy platforms so we could start with a blank piece of paper. When you start from that point of view there are a number of things you can look at from a different perspective. Cybersecurity sits right on top of our list so, when we started looking for platforms and how we were going to start building these systems, those factors took us in the direction of certain decisions. For example, Microsoft has made massive investment in its Azure platform and in particular security, which made them an attractive partner.
IBS Journal: How hard was it to keep the venture under wraps until the final reveal earlier this year?
NO: I have no idea how we managed it but thank God we did. When you go through an authorisation process you’re working with regulators very closely. It’s a complex process and it has to be – you never know when you’re going to get to the end of it. It’s like an extended test, really. We wanted to maintain a degree of confidentiality on what we were doing. Not because we feared any sort of competitive action but common sense says keep quiet until you’re ready. We got everybody onto NDAs and kept the process going. There must have been 500 people on NDAs by the end of the process and we’re grateful to them for keeping quiet. Had it not been for some vigilant journalists, it would have been kept quiet until the end of February.
IBS Journal: Apart from a few nibbles here and there from journalists, were there any major close calls?
NO: None. The only reason this was found out was because it was on the minutes of the 15th December’s Monetary Policy meeting. One of your fellow journalists was obviously having a boring Christmas holiday and read them. That’s how they found out so I got a message asking “what’s going on? What’s this about? What’s ClearBank?” and although I confirmed nothing they published what was already in the public domain. Our intention was to announce and control our own message to the marketplace and we had a lot of people chasing us after that report. So on 28th February we announced what we were up to.
IBS Journal: What has been the reaction of the existing clearing banks to the development and launch of ClearBank?
NO: Every one of them has approached us to talk to them. NO: We couldn’t afford to make a £1.5 billion investment every
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They want to understand what we’re doing. Where we’ve come from we’re saying there need to be changes in the marketplace and the way those changes can occur in a regulated marketplace is you can fracture existing incumbents or create something new. We’ve come into the marketplace with a new platform, new services and new technology. We’re complimentary, not competitive. They don’t have the capabilities that we’ve got and so it’s a complimentary approach to moving the whole market forward, rather than saying that things have been wrong all these years. There are some very interesting partnership opportunities opening up. As and when they come to fruition we’ll be making announcements. We’ve had widespread support from across the industry, as well as government and regulators.
IBS Journal: How do you feel working via the cloud, both public and private, will help ClearBank differentiate the market?
NO: The platform that we have created with Microsoft is globally unique in the way that we use Azure. We have a public cloud overlaid with datacentres in private environments. It gives us phenomenal scale and security as well as scale both domestically and globally. We wouldn’t have been able to achieve that doing this as a total in-house solution. It would have cost a fortune in hardware and systems and we get the best of both worlds [with Microsoft]. At a cost level, one of our UK datacentres costs the same as 44 years of cloud computing use. That shows the differentials perfectly.
IBS Journal: Were there ever any concerns around ClearBank’s embracing of the cloud?
NO: No. When we first met with the Bank of England, which was one of our first technical conversations, we were very clear about the direction we wanted to take. We involved the regulators and the payment schemes in our discussions as we brought it forward. We also had a private presentation last year where Sean Foley, the CTO of Microsoft’s Financial Services division, came over and talked to all the regulators about cybersecurity and how the Azure cloud works. If you have the right argument and the right backup, regulators are very prepared to listen and listen reasonably quickly. That doesn’t mean they’ll say yes straightaway but they’re open to the arguments that you put forward.
IBS Journal: Were there proposals from any other major cloud service providers?
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