Fast forward 12 months and we have established a new and independent economic regulator from scratch, with a team of experts and a comprehensive set of proposals.
I am immensely proud of what we have achieved. This new website, for example, is just one of many milestones we have reached.
As I write this, we are in the final stages of preparing to become operational, which will happen on 1 April. Come ‘Day One’, we will be ready.
But before then we will be publishing our final approach to regulating the payment systems industry – our Policy Statement. That will happen before the end of March. It will confirm exactly how we will work, what we expect of the industry, and - ultimately - how we will deliver our statutory objectives and make the payments industry better.
Now is an exciting time in payments. Payment systems, estimated to process somewhere in the region of £75 trillion a year, underpin almost every transaction we make. They are vital to the safe and effective functioning of the UK economy as well as making our day to day spending quick and simple.
We are the first regulator purely focused on payment systems in the world. The challenge for us is to make sure our payment systems not only stay safe and secure, but to push on and improve the experience and outcomes for everyone that uses them. The PSR will be a benefit to the consumer, and a benefit to the payments industry.
We have been given a great responsibility. Everybody at the PSR is looking ahead and focused on our shared vision of payment systems that are accessible, reliable, secure and value for money.
We want the payment systems industry to come with us and to do so willingly. This is my hope, and so far the noises we have heard are encouraging: people recognise the need for change. But we have also been given some of the strongest powers of any UK regulator to bring change to the market and if we need to use them, we will.
While the PSR has been a year in the making, the real journey starts now.