samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
To facilitate the collection of information, the Central Bank has established an on-line Web-based reporting system through a central database for all licensed banks. The banks forward their periodic reports to the Central Bank through this system, which facilitates collation and analysis of the information for off-site surveillance and to pursue corrective action by banks. In this respect, technology has not only changed the way banking business is conducted, but also to modernize the supervisory and regulatory framework in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. 6.3 In addition to spearheading with the introduction of new technology platforms for payments, clearing and settlements, the Central Bank also established a conducive legal and regulatory framework for IT related operations in Banks. During 2002 – 2006, the Central Bank introduced several amendments to the Registered Stocks and Securities Ordinance, Local Treasury Bills Act to facilitate RTGS and SSS transactions. In addition, the Central Bank also passed a dedicated law, i.e. the Payments and Settlements Act to regulate the national payment system with enabling powers to the Central Bank to monitor and regulate new payments instruments, systems and service providers. This Act also includes appropriate provisions for customer rights. In the retail payments area, prior to the introduction of the cheque imaging system through LankaClear, the Central Bank initiated amendments to the Bills of Exchange Ordinance, and Evidence Law to enable cheque images be recognized in courts.

Central Bank initiatives  4.1 In the interest of the wider financial system stability, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka is responsible to ensure smooth, speedy and safe operations of the nation’s payment, clearing and settlement systems. Since 2003, the Central Bank has taken the lead to introduce an efficient and safe payment and settlements for both high value and time critical transactions by introducing the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system for interbank and third party customers. The RTGS system is a computer-based fund settlement system, which processes and settles each payment instruction individually and irrevocably on a real time basis, using funds in the participants’ RTGS Settlement Accounts or Central Bank funds provided under an intraday liquidity facility. At present, the value of transactions settled in the RTGS system accounts for about 81 per cent of the non-cash high value payments in Sri Lanka. The majority of RTGS transactions are on account of the inter-bank call money market, the government securities market, open market operations, the Rupee leg of transactions in the foreign exchange market, urgent and time critical payments of customers and net obligations under the clearing system operated by LankaClear Ltd, a venture jointly  2  BIS Review 13/2008  owned by the Central Bank and commercial banks. In early 2004, the Central Bank implemented the Scripless Securities Settlement (SSS) System for settlement of government debt instruments in electronic or scripless form and settlement of trades of such scripless securities on a Delivery Vs. Payment (DvP) basis.
Ravi Menon: opportunities  Global  outlook,  Asian  promise,  alternative  Speech by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the DBS Institutional Investor Symposium 2017, Singapore, 22 June 2017. * * * Mr Piyush Gupta, CEO, DBS Bank Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I am happy to join you today, and I thank DBS Bank for the invitation. The American author John Maxwell once said, “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” As investors, you too seek to adjust the sails, to avoid being knocked over by market turbulence and to find new harbours of opportunity. So, what are the winds facing us like? Let me offer some thoughts in three areas: First, the global economy and financial markets – where are we today, what are the risks? Second, Asia’s medium-term prospects and the promise it offers to investors. Third, opportunities in alternative assets as investors look to unlock new sources of value. Global economy and financial markets The global outlook seems rather straightforward at this point. Growth is on a positive momentum and is increasingly broad-based, across both advanced and emerging economies. Global trade has picked up, manufacturing has recovered, and commodity prices have bottomed. Most measures of confidence are looking up. But the factors that underpin sustained growth – capital investment and productivity – remain weak in most parts of the world.

What ought to matter more is whether efforts are being stepped up to achieve sustained growth over the medium-term – by reducing vulnerabilities in the system and implementing structural reforms. Second, markets seem to be under-estimating the pace of monetary policy normalisation, particularly by the US Fed. The Fed’s guidance suggests one more rate hike in 2017, and three each in 2018 and 2019. But markets are pricing in less than three hikes in total for the rest of this year through 2019. Granted – with lower oil prices and muted wage growth, the risk of inflation surprising on the upside is low. But what if that risk materialises, especially if the labour market tightens further? Unemployment is already around its natural rate. Past experience suggests that the pass-through from labour market tightness to inflation tends to accelerate as unemployment falls below the natural rate. That could well lead to a faster pace of monetary policy normalisation than the market currently anticipates. Finally, there is a conundrum between volatility and uncertainty. Why is volatility so low in financial markets when uncertainty is high on the policy front? Perhaps it is because uncertainty about economic growth is lower. - The size and number of revisions to global growth forecasts have clearly come down. But surely, political uncertainty is at elevated levels? And when politics is uncertain, can the economics remain unaffected? A disorderly Brexit could lead to increased market turmoil and trigger sharp asset price corrections.
I won’t use any more of this speech today to look backwards. For those that do want to dig deeper, I’d like to briefly plug a speech by my colleague Jon Hall, which will cover the risks of leverage including in LDIs next week. What I’d like to do instead is explain what the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) is doing to build steady state resilience in LDI funds and what needs to be done by pension funds to ensure risks to financial stability are reduced. Then I’ll look forwards to how the FPC might use this framework for steady state resilience in LDI funds to build resilience throughout the system of market-based finance[6] in the future. How are we building resilience in LDI funds? As this audience will know, the FPC does not have specific regulatory responsibility for pension schemes or LDI funds. However, the FPC has recommended a framework for steady-state resilience within LDI funds. [7] The FPC recommended that The Pensions Regulator (TPR) specify and enforce minimum levels of resilience for LDI funds, continuing its collaboration with other  Page 3  relevant regulators where necessary. TPR took a first step towards this in April. [8]  What should LDI funds be resilient to? And what form will this resilience take? The FPC wants to ensure that in the future, core markets such as gilt markets can continue operating even while suddenly repricing.

I’ve spent this morning talking about measures to tackle the root cause of the stress last autumn, poorly managed leverage. But LDI funds aren’t the only non-bank to use leverage. [20] And leverage is also not the only vulnerability in the non-bank system. Forced selling that can follow from leverage can also arise from liquidity mismatches[21] or from a lack of preparedness for margin calls. [22] Identifying vulnerabilities is only half the battle. We also need to understand how market participants will behave when a stress hits. To this end, the Bank is very shortly launching its exploratory exercise to enhance understanding of the risks to and from non-banks, their behaviours, and how these behaviours can amplify shocks. As part of this exercise the Bank may reach out to some of you attending this conference. Shining a light on how market participants may behave collectively in a stress will help both the Bank and yourselves better prepare for such events. You’ll hear plenty from us once the exercise is launched. In particular, my colleague Lee Foulger will be giving a speech next week outlining how this exercise will helps us to better understand system-wide resilience. But what should we do about these vulnerabilities? We should seek to contain them and to mitigate their financial stability impact. This is what I’ve laid out today with respect to LDI funds’ leverage. Further frameworks may need to be built up.
It also demands greater agility, astuteness and foresight on our part to go beyond and able to ride on the next wave of growth – either at the higher end of the spectrum of financial services that focus on sophisticated and high value added activities or the lower end that cater for the traditionally underserved, as well as opportunity to fully realise the benefits from the greater regional and international integration. At the same time, a myriad of challenges including global regulatory reform, transformational technology and changing generational expectations will continue to drive change in the years to come. This would also mean that financial institutions will need to meet higher standards of how they manage risks and govern their operations. Against this background, the professionalism, productivity and capability of our talents become more important now than ever before. Future success will hinge on our ability to constantly remould the workforce in the banking industry for a new marketplace, with emphasis on a corresponding increase in the levels of knowledge, skills, competencies and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  overall quality of our talents. We clearly have an urgent and important task ahead of us. The critical questions therefore need to be asked here – Have we done enough to sustain the competitiveness of our workforce to meet the current and future industry needs and what more can be done to propel the industry to new heights?

The transformation of Institut Bank-Bank Malaysia (IBBM) – the industry’s former training outfit, into AICB – the new professional body for the banking sector, in 2013 was an important step in this direction. The AICB champions the vision of professionalising bankers and advocates for high standards of professionalism via the introduction of its new membership framework, subjecting its members to a strict code of conduct, professionalism and ethics. Every effort now needs to be made to build on, and elevate further, the quality and value of AICB’s award of the Chartered Banker qualification so that it can be truly regarded as a gold standard for the banking professionals. In this regard, the banking industry ought to give appropriate recognition to individuals and staff who attain this prestigious qualification. Of equal importance is the demand for higher and specialist skills for high value added jobs, there are also merits in introducing more specialised qualification and certification according to functional areas or business lines, beyond the current certification offerings for treasury traders and credit officers. The suite of qualifications and certifications would then allow the banking profession to raise the bar of competence higher across sector. In taking on its mandate as the training and educational institution for the industry, we envisage the ABS to play a central role in supporting AICB as its premium learning partner in the move toward professionalising the banking sector.
To say that was risky is an understatement: at such levels, a 2% fall in the value of a bank’s assets is sufficient to wipe out its capital and render it insolvent. Remuneration, especially the structure of financial sector bonuses, encouraged excessive risk-taking, and distorted the aspirations and career choices of too many talented young people. Investors, banks and regulators had been swept up by the apparent success of modern finance. When investors realised that many of the assets that banks held on their balance sheets were opaque and hard to value, there was immediate and justifiable concern about the solvency of many of those banks. At the end of 2008, these two fundamental factors culminated in the worst financial crisis in history. In the six months after Lehman Brothers collapsed world trade fell by nearly 20% – a faster decline than in the Great Depression. Around the world, the same telling phrase was repeated: economic activity was “falling off a cliff”. In its statement to the London G20 summit in April 2009, the international trade union movement argued that “The first priority for G20 leaders must be to restore confidence by halting the freefall in world growth”. That has been achieved. World output grew by 4% over the past year. And in the United Kingdom, growth has been somewhat faster than anticipated a year ago. Nevertheless, total UK output remains around 10% below where it would have been had the crisis not occurred. So how do we prevent this happening again?

Mervyn King: Address by Mervyn King to Trades Union Congress Address by Mr Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, to the 2010 Trades Union Congress, Manchester, 15 September 2010. *  *  *  President and Congress I want first to thank you for inviting me to address Congress. Members of your General Council have made a huge contribution to the Bank of England by serving on our board – the Bank’s Court. Carrying on that tradition today is Brendan Barber. By bringing a distinct and important perspective to our discussions, Brendan has helped us through some extremely turbulent times. I am grateful to him. Recent times have indeed been turbulent. After a decade and a half of stability, with rising employment and living standards, came the crisis and recession – the biggest economic upheaval since the Great Depression. Before the crisis, steady growth with low inflation and high employment was in our grasp. We let it slip – we, that is, in the financial sector and as policy-makers – not your members nor the many businesses and organisations around the country which employ them. And although the causes of the crisis may have been rooted in the financial sector, the consequences are affecting everyone, and will continue to do so for years to come. Thankfully, the costs of the crisis have been smaller than those of the Great Depression. But only because we learnt from that experience. An unprecedented degree of policy stimulus, here and abroad, prevented another world slump.
In the latter part, I will share with you my thoughts on the way the Thai economy is moving forward as well as opportunities for Japanese businesses. Let me start with the first part, by reviewing what we went through last year. I believe you all agree with me that 2016 was full of unexpected events and turns. On the domestic front, we faced with a severe drought early in the year followed by a historic flood in the South around the end of the year, and of course the passing of His Majesty the late King Bhumibol, which caused all Thai people the greatest sorrow. Also, the government’s crackdown of illegal tour operators led to temporary yet significant effects on the tourism industry which had been a major growth driver of the economy in the past few years. On the external front, we saw the Bank of Japan’s adopting a negative interest rate policy in January of last year, an unease  1  over the fate of European financial institutions, the Brexit vote, and the unexpected outcome of the U.S. presidential election. Yet the Thai economy was able to weather these storms, one after another, and ended up with a 3.2 percent growth with all stability intact. The resilience reflected the underlying strength of the economy which owed partly to preemptive policies to create shock absorbers for the economy such as ample international reserves and ample banks’ capital base and loan loss provision.

This illustrates the importance of further reforms. 1/1  BIS central bankers' speeches
In every platform we participated and in every announcement we made, we emphasized our policy objective, which is to achieve and maintain price stability, the reasons underlying our policy implementations and the importance of having a medium-term vision in terms of lagged effect of policy decisions. To this end, we try to use communication policy effectively as an important part of the inflationtargeting regime. We base our communication policy on the grounds of trust, transparency, consistency and decisiveness. I believe this is not peculiar to the Turkish case. Many central bankers in emerging market countries have to deal with the drawbacks of a past of high and chronic inflation and thus incredible policies. And it is by all means clear that designing a communication strategy is not easy under these circumstances. As you may all agree, the concept of communication itself is a dynamic issue. Therefore, given the importance of effective communication, it is important to note that we at the Central Bank of Turkey have been working continuously on improving our communication policy. 5  Woodford, M. (2003). Interest and Prices. Princeton Univesity Press. 6  BIS. (1998). “The Transmission of Monetary Policy in Emerging Market Economies”. BIS Policy Papers No. 3. 7  Orphanides, A. (2006). “The Road to Price Stability”. BIS Review 88/2006  5  Dear guests, There is no doubt that central banking can be considered as a combination of positive sciences and human psychology, or as you could say, the union of science and art.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Focus on human capital development in Malaysia Welcoming remarks by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the INCEIF Strategic Partnership 2006, Kuala Lumpur, 14 December 2006. *  *  *  Yang Berhormat, Dato' Mustapa Mohamed, Minister of Higher Education, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my great pleasure and honour to welcome you to INCEIF Strategic Partnership in conjunction with the signing of Memorandum of Understanding between INCEIF and nine institutions of higher learning in Malaysia. This occasion is of particular significance as, on this day, with the grace of Allah, we are laying the foundation for the promotion of collaborative efforts in human capital development which will benefit the Islamic financial services industry. Against an environment of a rapidly evolving Islamic financial industry and the growing significance of Islamic financial institutions globally, human intellectual capital has become the defining factor in sustaining the performance and competitiveness of the Islamic financial industry. Indeed, the fast pace of innovation in global financial services in general and in the Islamic financial services sector in particular, demands new expertise and skills. In this environment, the creation of a substantial pool of talent is indispensable for the future growth of Islamic finance. In this regard, Malaysia has placed strong focus on human capital development through training and education.
We need to improve our ability to distinguish between skill and luck. Simultaneously we need to draw the adequate conclusions from the difficulties that will always exist in signal extraction on this issue. Excessive risk-taking: lack of knowledge... Let me now turn to the question of financial risk-taking. Overall, there is no (expected) return and no growth without risk so we have to be careful to foster a sufficiently pro-risk society. But risk calculus – weighing the marginal advantages and disadvantages of taking more risk – is a difficult exercise. It is difficult because it entails probabilities, that are hard to assess, over future scenarios which are themselves often hard to describe fully and accurately. And the difficulty increases by an additional step if there is an externality, that is, if the private and social cost and benefit of additional risk-taking differ. One can plausibly  2  2  Wilmott, P. (2009) “Financial Modelers’ Manifesto”, available at www.willmott.com, January 2009. BIS central bankers’ speeches  argue that the recent financial crisis was, to some extent, the result of excessive risk-taking. For the proponents of this hypothesis, the ultimate cause is in question. One possibility is that this excessive risk-taking was the result of wrong incentives, with decision-makers wilfully taking more risk for themselves or their institutions than would have been privately or socially desirable. The alternative would be that a misperception of the probabilities and possible consequences of the decisions was the prime cause: a lack of knowledge or competence.

Since I will essentially concentrate on the first possibility, i.e. incentives, let me recall, by a way of contrast, a recent study by Fahlenbrach and Stulz (2011). These authors show that the losses of the banks whose managers’ incentives were most closely aligned with the long-term interests of the firm they managed were at least as large, in the last crisis, as those at the financial institutions where governance was more obviously lacking. This suggests that wrong incentives were not the only factor in the behaviour and decisions that led to the crisis. Knowledge and competence were also at play. ... or a misalignment of incentives? Incentives are an important component in risk and risk-taking. If there is an important lesson in economics and finance that has not been invalidated by the financial crisis, it is that incentives really do matter. The excessive risk-taking that was observed prior to the financial crisis is likely to have been – among other things – the result of the fact that key decisionmakers were not provided with the right incentives to carefully analyse and balance the possible consequences of the risks they agreed to take. Let us take a bank as an example. The main relevant stakeholders are the depositors, the shareholders, the managers and the bondholders.