As part of our strategy to broaden access to our facilities, we have decided to establish a Shari’ah-compliant deposit facility to enable Islamic banks to use our liquidity facilities. The technical detail on how we intend to implement this is set out in a series of consultation papers on Shari’ah-compliant liquidity facilities.
We also carried out a consultation in 2016:
On 28 September 2018, Dave Ramsden, Deputy Governor, Markets and Banking, announced that the Bank will shortly be establishing a new subsidiary of the Bank, to house the Shari’ah Compliant Facility; this will be a special purpose vehicle, called the Bank of England Alternative Liquidity Facility (BEALF). This will also be the first non-interest based liquidity facility to be offered by a major Western central bank, providing important structural support to the UK’s Islamic finance sector.
In August 2018 the Bank published a discussion paper on the Bank of England’s future balance sheet and framework for controlling interest rates. The Bank intends to engage a wide range of market practitioners and experts in this dialogue, including participants in the Sterling Monetary Framework (SMF participants), to learn more about the demand for reserves over time and plans to update on the findings from this initial stage of work in publications an