Bank of England Quant Pick

The Bank of England has picked Quant for a six-month lab testing whether corporate cash can move across multiple banks in one all-or-nothing sterling settlement. (bankofengland.co.uk) (quant.network) Quant said on February 13, 2026 that its use case in the Bank’s Synchronisation Lab is “multi-bank treasury rebalancing,” the routine job of shifting cash between bank accounts to meet funding needs. The Bank said 18 organisations were selected for the non-live programme, which runs from spring 2026 for around six months. (quant.network) (bankofengland.co.uk) The mechanics are simple in theory: each bank first reserves funds, then the whole bundle settles together, or none of it does. Quant said that replaces today’s sequence of separate CHAPS or other high-value payments, where one leg can complete before another and leave treasury teams with partial-settlement risk. (quant.network) The Bank calls this “atomic settlement,” meaning cash and the linked asset or payment move only if every leg moves. In its synchronisation papers, the Bank says the model is meant to cut settlement risk in transactions such as foreign exchange, repo backed by tokenised bonds, and other multi-ledger transfers. (bankofengland.co.uk 1) (bankofengland.co.uk 2) This sits inside the Bank’s overhaul of Real-Time Gross Settlement, the core infrastructure banks use to settle high-value sterling payments in central bank money. The renewed platform, RT2, went live on April 28, 2025, and the Bank says synchronisation is one of the next capabilities it is designing on top of that system. (bankofengland.co.uk 1) (bankofengland.co.uk 2) The Bank has been building toward this for years. A 2019 background paper described synchronisation as a way to coordinate sterling central-bank-money settlement with assets or payments on other ledgers, and the more recent Project Meridian work said the concept was technically feasible and interoperable. (bankofengland.co.uk 1) (bankofengland.co.uk 2) (bankofengland.co.uk 3) A public webinar tied to the lab is scheduled for April 22, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. BST, with a Bank of England keynote and presentations from Quant, Ctrl Alt and Tokenovate. The event listing says the discussion will focus on fund settlement, collateral mobility and digital-asset use cases for asset managers. (headlinemoney.co.uk) Quant says its own software, Quant Flow, will package treasury instructions and update treasury systems after finality is confirmed, using real-time account data through open-banking connections and application programming interfaces. The company also says the exercise does not amount to Bank of England approval, endorsement or policy adoption. (quant.network) That caveat runs through the Bank’s design too: the lab is a test bed, not a live launch. But if the experiments work, the Bank says they will help shape a future production synchronisation capability for sterling settlement on RT2. (bankofengland.co.uk)