UK CBDC Head Sought by HM Treasury

HM Treasury seeks to hire new UK CBDC head

The UK Treasury is seeking to fill the position of "head of a central bank digital currency" (CBDC) to spearhead the government's efforts to create a digital pound.

The United Kingdom has been mulling introducing the UK CBDC, and there are plans to launch a public consultation soon.

According to a LinkedIn job posting, the successful candidate will, in collaboration with the CBDC task force and the Bank of England, lead the exploration and development of the country’s central bank digital currency. The role of the UK CBDC chief, which is separate from the crypto-assets and digital currencies head, is in tandem with the existing Payments and Fintech Team.

Ensure they get the UK CBDC design right

Reports indicate that from as early as 2020, the Bank of England was already chasing the CBDC use-case dream in collaboration with other central banks worldwide. Britain's Financial Services Minister Andrew Griffith stated on January 10, 2023, that the country’s immediate priority was to ensure they get the UK CBDC design right. Saying the planned public consultation would be addressing the question of if and not when Griffith said he "would rather be right than be first".

A CBDC is a digital currency, but unlike cryptocurrencies, it’s issued by a central bank. There won’t be any physical money, such as coins or notes, produced, meaning the UK CDBC would only exist in electronic form. According to a report dubbed "Future of Payments" by OMFIF (the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, an independent think tank focusing on public investment, economic policy, and central banking, at least 100 countries globally are at a particular stage of exploring or developing CBDCs.

The clearest indicator

The report further stated that at least two-thirds of the central banks surveyed by OMFIF had plans to issue CBDCs within the next ten years. Statistics in the public domain indicate that all of the G-7 economies and at least 18 others from the G-20 are working on their CBDCs. China leads the larger economies as its digital Yuan is on a trial run.

The UK's Financial Services Minister assured MPs late last year that there would be a lengthy consultation before the introduction of a CBDC.

The Bank of England maintains there wasn’t a substantive decision yet on its introduction. However, Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe suggested that the FTX fiasco and its impact on the crypto sphere was the clearest indicator of the need for a digital pound.