Guest Speaker Ian Derrik Bank of England Rep for Wales

The speaker for our last meeting in January was Ian Derrick, Deputy Agent at the Bank of England (BoE) Agency for Wales.  Ian joined BoE in 2000 and spent a year\'s secondment at the Office of National Statistics in Newport.   Born and schooled in Llanelli and after graduating from Cardiff with a Degree in Economics worked primarily in corporate banking and project finance roles in the City of London.   

Ian explained his role as gathering intelligence from private sector businesses mostly but also from the third and public sector bodies for the Bank\'s policy committees, which feeds into the MPC that sets interest rates.   He also presents talks (like this) to explain where the economy is and where it is going, and what that means for interest rates.

Ian provided us with details on what the BoE does and how he fitted into that.   He is one of four people working in Wales out of a total of 3,500 at the Bank.   Details of the Economic  outlook were provided and an insight into the U.K. financial stability outlook was also explained to us.

For audience interest we were asked to guess the value of a gold bar as seen in his photograph from the vaults of the Bank.   We were provided with statistics of the number of various bank notes in circulation and monetary stability was achieved by the setting of interest rates eight times per year.
Our GDP in the near term and the effect of Covid on price inflation in the long term was described in detail.   

Rtn Brian provided a vote of thanks to Ian for a detailed and most interesting talk.
The post-meeting chat illustrated how much the talk had been appreciated.