The Bank of England is Britain's central bank, headquartered on Threadneedle Street in London. Its governor is Andrew Bailey, who has called the bank's regional agents "our eyes and ears".
In 2023 the Bank of England was given a secondary mandate to promote international competitiveness and growth. In December 2025, in a pre-emptive strike against forthcoming American rule changes, it eased the overall capital requirement for British banks from 14% to 13% of their risk-weighted assets—the first such reduction since the current rules were put in place a decade ago, though one that remains compliant with the Basel III accords.
The bank operates a network of regional agents across 12 regions of Britain. The network celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2026. The first agent, Charles Cripps, was sent to Gloucester in 1826 with a sub-agent, four clerks and two porters on a mission to increase the circulation of banknotes.
Each year the agents conduct 6,000 interviews with businesses, from independent restaurants to large conglomerates. The conversations are mostly face-to-face and can be very candid; contacts sometimes share sensitive news before almost anybody else. The governor visits each of the 12 regions at least once a year to hear from businesses directly.
The agents offer two advantages over other data sources. First, timeliness: official numbers often arrive slowly and are then heavily revised. When Donald Trump announced large tariff increases on April 2nd 2025, businesses were surprisingly sanguine in their feedback to agents, which helped steady rate-setters' nerves. Second, the agents provide the "flesh on the bone"—why firms do what they do and what they plan to do next.
The bank is exploring whether large language models can help summarise agents' reports and counteract some human biases. America's Federal Reserve publishes a similar document, its Beige Book, a summary of anecdotal reports gathered by its 12 regional banks, eight times a year.
Fine's Corollary: Functionality breeds Contempt.