The Bank of England is inviting applications for its latest accelerator project with an emphasis on conducting proofs of concept around machine learning and privacy in distributed ledgers.
Launched in June 2016, the central bank's fintech accelerator seeks to work in partnership with third party tech firms to help provide insights on new approaches to Bank operations and wider marketplace developments.
The latest proof of concept trials to emerge from the accelerator include an AI-driven application from MindBridge, and a cross-border payments pilot with Ripple.
In a statement inviting the latest batch of applications, the Bank says: "Our recent work on distributed ledger technologies and machine learning has highlighted areas for further exploration, so we are particularly keen to advance our understanding of quantitative and qualitative machine learning solutions and to conduct a more detailed exploration of privacy in distributed ledger networks."
The time-limited proof of concepts in the data analytics field of most interest to the Bank include the use of AI tools to improve data visualisation, predictive outcomes, sentiment analyis, anomaly detection, behavioural trails across e-mail correspondence, and XBRL data storage techniques.
In distributed ledgers, the Bank says: "We are interested in exploring how DLT based systems can be configured to ensure a level of privacy amongst participants. The concept will need to confirm that no party is able to infer details about transactions to which they are not a counterparty, including ensuring that participants in the consensus process do not have full visibility of transaction details. We are not looking for anonymity; all participants must be identifiable and a regulatory view possible."
A deadline of 17 may has been set for firms to apply with an expression of interest.