samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Further, a new Guide to Banking Supervision has been drafted, setting down the procedures all SSM members are to follow. The SSM has been defined as an integrated system of bank surveillance, which will combine the leadership of the ECB with the active participation of national supervisory authorities. In any event, arrangements are in place to ensure that the assumption of these new functions by the ECB will not clash with its monetary policy responsibilities. As of June 2014, total euro area bank assets amounted to € trillion. Given the very high number of credit institutions (some 3,500) established in the euro area, the SSM regulation draws a distinction between “significant” institutions, which will be supervised directly by the ECB, and “less significant” institutions, which will remain the responsibility of national authorities and which the ECB will indirectly supervise. Finally, a list of 120 significant institutions has been drawn up, 15 of which are Spanish (14 once a merger currently under way has been completed), accounting for just over 90% of the assets of deposit institutions in Spain. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  The 120 “significant” institutions represent 80–85% of total euro area bank assets; the Spanish banks that will be directly supervised by the SSM account for 14% of the total assets of these 120 significant institutions.

In the case of households, employment creation and wage growth might decline. As to non-financial corporations, the rise in their profits might diminish. The public sector would also see its balance of revenue and expenditure affected by the operation of the automatic stabilisers. That would all mean that both private and public levels of debt might ultimately be higher than expected, with further implications both for spending decisions and financial markets’ perception about the debt sustainability path. Logically, the deteriorating macroeconomic context would also affect deposit institutions. Compounding the fall in the value of some of their assets would be lower demand for credit. Moreover, asset quality might worsen, given that the ability of their borrowers to pay would be negatively affected. They would also face greater difficulty in continuing to jettison their non-earning assets. As a result, their income statements would be subject to downward pressures. This is particularly significant in a context, such as the present, in which banks are posting low profits. Against this background, it would be desirable in economic policy terms that, after the elections, a stable government were formed. That would lessen uncertainty over the future course of economic policies, give fresh momentum to structural reforms and see a resumption of fiscal consolidation, with the aim of improving potential growth and reducing the main sources of vulnerability in the Spanish economy, in particular high public and external debt levels.
‘Debt Strikes Back’ or ‘The Return of the Regulator’? Alex Brazier Executive Director, Financial Director for Financial Stability Strategy and Risk Member of the Financial Policy Committee Bank of England  University of Liverpool, Institute for Risk and Uncertainty Monday 24 July 2017  I am grateful to David Baumslag, Jonathan Bridges, Liam Kirwin, Iren Levina, Vas Madouros, David Seaward, Sagar Shah, Gavin Wallis and Mina Yau for their help in preparing these remarks. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  It is an honour to be invited to contribute to this lecture series here at the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty. Thinking about risk sometimes has a more derogatory description: worrying. And worrying has a bad name for itself as an unproductive, possibly harmful, activity. But intelligent worry – worry about what could go wrong and action to deal with it before it does – is central to the aim that this Institute and the Bank of England share: creating a safer world. So in much the same way that Star Wars fans must enjoy conventions that bring together like-minded people, whose interest is not always appreciated by others, it is a pleasure to be here with fellow intelligent worriers. 1  With household debt at high levels and after a period in which consumer debt has increased very rapidly, my theme this evening draws inspiration from the Star Wars films.

The ECB pursues this objective in a consistent and forward-looking manner, ensuring the confidence of all policy-makers, both within and outside the euro area. Experience so far suggests that the ECB has been able to keep inflationary expectations at a low level. Although current HICP figures in the euro area are adversely affected by energy and food prices, the current outlook is compatible with the maintenance of price stability in the medium term. This view is supported by the analysis of bond yields. It is comforting to see that market participants expect medium-term price developments to remain in line with the ECB's definition of price stability. Currently available forecasts give rise to the expectation that inflation will again fall below 2% in 2002. Hence, we appear to be on the right track. However, we must not ignore existing risks to price stability. The Governing Council of the ECB therefore always stresses that it is vigilant and will take into account all new information that might affect the outlook for price stability in the medium term. Let me now conclude by recalling that, while the ECB cannot be held accountable for growth in the euro area, interest rates in the euro area have been relatively low, and cannot, by any means, be considered to be an obstacle to growth. Currently, although uncertainty remains high, the general expectation is that growth in the euro area will remain at, or slightly above, trend potential growth in the period ahead.
Some survey measures of labour availability are at their lowest level at least since inflation targeting began (Chart 14). Vacancies are at a record high (the official series began in 2001). Both suggest a tighter labour market than you’d normally expect at current levels of unemployment. Chart 13. Unemployment has surprised to the downside in recent months Per cent  Chart 14. Survey measures point to tighter labour market than unemployment alone would suggest 5.2  0  Wage growth (rhs)  10 5.0 4.8 4.6 Data  4.4  August MPR forecast  4.2  Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul  4.0 Aug Sep  Sources: ONS and Bank calculations. 20  Staff availability (lhs, inverted)  90 80  30  70  40  60  50 60  50  70  40  80 30  90 100  20 99 01 03 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19 21  Indices: 50 = no change on the previous month. Wage growth series weighs together the ‘Permanent staff salaries’ and ‘Temporary staff pay rates’ indices according to the shares of permanent and temporary employees in the Labour Force Survey. Sources: KPMG/REC UK Report on jobs, ONS and Bank calcs. Over the cycle, there tends to be a reasonably stable – and inverse – relationship between vacancies and unemployment, known as the “Beveridge curve”. In an upswing, vacancies rise and unemployment declines.

The French government and the French financial authorities, including the Banque de France, are also working together to facilitating the dissemination of sound and safe financial innovations and fostering the scaling up of sustainable finance. These investments are protected by a very resilient banking system, accompanied by consistent regulation. Let me remind you that Paris is already home to the European Securities and Markets Authority and will soon host the European Banking Authority. In addition, the Paris Court of Appeal was granted an 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  international chamber last February, with international commercial affairs falling within its remit. That will duly complete the Paris court organisation, which already includes an international chamber in its commercial court. Last but not least, let me stress that the French authorities are making sure that the Paris financial centre and its participants benefit from a streamlined and business-friendly regulatory framework, for instance in areas such as bond issuance and securitisation. Meanwhile, significant efforts have been made by the French government to alleviate the tax regime and social contributions of “impatriates.” Starting in 2016 under the previous government, they have been amplified by the new one, including on the eve of the business summit last January. *** France is changing, for the better. But it is still dependent on its economic environment, obviously. Let me conclude with two wishes. First: that Europe is courageous enough to strengthen itself through this cyclical upswing.
Tarisa Watanagase: Mitigating fraud risk in financial institutions Keynote address by Dr Tarisa Watanagase, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the seminar on “Mitigating Fraud Risk in Financial Institutions”, Bangkok, 29 April 2008. *  *  *  Khun Kaisri, Distinguished Guests, It is my great pleasure to join you at this seminar on “Mitigating Fraud Risk in Financial Institutions”, hosted by KPMG Thailand. I would also like to thank the host for giving me this important opportunity to share the views of the Bank of Thailand on this topic. The globalization of the financial services industry, the increased sophistication and complexity of financial institutions and their services, and the ongoing advancement of technology continue to introduce new risks and opportunities for fraud. The pace and complexity of these advances have vastly accelerated beyond the risk associated with traditional credit and market risk activities. One of those emerging risks in financial institutions is fraud risk, which needs to be effectively controlled through effective governance and sound operational risk management processes. Fraud risk in financial institutions has increased as perpetrators use advanced innovation and technology to identify and exploit weaknesses in banks’ IT systems, databases, and delivery channels, including ATMs and the Internet. Financial institutions must take care to ensure that system security measures are effective as a means to combat fraud.

5 By law, IOR is available only to depository institutions.6 Absent frictions, IOR should provide a floor on interest rates, since competition between banks that can acquire funds in the wholesale market at rates below IOR and earn the spread should bring these rates very close to that paid on reserves. In practice, a number of frictions have led money market rates to trade moderately below IOR. ON RRP, which is offered to a broad selection of counterparties that includes money market funds, is intended to intensify competition in money markets and enhance the transmission of IOR into other overnight money market rates. It also has proved useful as a shock absorber. I will get back to that in a moment. The transmission of monetary policy relies on competition within, and integration across, money markets. The FOMC’s policy target is the federal funds rate, which is a measure of what banks pay to take out unsecured overnight loans from other banks and from government-sponsored entities. However, the Federal Reserve does not transact in the federal funds market, and therefore cannot directly impact the federal funds rate.7 Instead, it relies on a predictable relationship between rates in the markets in which it does operate, and rates on federal funds borrowings.
Indeed, one of the key benefits of globalisation over the past several decades is that the freer flow of goods and services, people and capital, ideas and information, has served as vehicle for the transmission and diffusion of new technologies across borders. Other things equal, this should have accelerated catch-up between countries operating at and inside the technological frontier. 65  Other things, however, have not been equal. Penetration rates of new technologies, once adopted, tell a different tale. They suggest that, over time, there has been a divergence between frontier and non-frontier countries. In other words, the intensity with which new technologies have been used has expanded more rapidly in frontier (especially Western) economies than in non-frontier (non-Western) ones. This will have retarded catch-up between the two blocs. It is a less encouraging story about the diffusion of innovation. With the intensive and extensive margins of diffusion pushing in opposite directions, which has won out? It seems to have been the forces of divergence: slower rates of penetration of new technologies have more than counter-balanced faster rates of adoption across countries. This has shown up in levels of productivity between frontier and non-frontier which, since around 1980, have if anything diverged. Chart 7 illustrates that. It compares levels of productivity across 44 countries since 1950 relative to the frontier country (the US). Convergence prior to 1980 has given way to divergence subsequently.

While most countries have leveraged on the existing legal or regulatory frameworks developed for consumer protection in general, there is a need to recognise the limitations of such general frameworks in addressing consumer protection in the context of promoting a more inclusive financial system. A consumer protection regime that relies on full disclosures may mean very little to consumers that have neither the capacity to understand the disclosures, nor the ability to exercise the appropriate choice between the products being offered. Existing consumer protection frameworks may need to be adapted to address the specific needs of the more vulnerable groups. Finally, the development of a financial education programme is vital to enhance financial capability for consumers to participate effectively in the financial system that is dynamic and fast evolving. We are now in an environment that is seeing the proliferation of financial products and services and the emergence of electronic finance. Greater financial literacy will also ensure that the financial industry will be responsive to the more discerning demands. Being ill equipped or having a lack of understanding of the nature of the products could increase vulnerability to misselling by financial institutions or to fraud and scams. Proficiency in financial knowledge will contribute towards greater empowerment and competent financial decisions. Studies have shown that financial education that is made available at an early age, in the school education system, will strengthen this potential and enhance the greater financial inclusion.
One of the explanations for the historically very low policy rates is a downward trend in global real interest rates, that is, the interest rates obtained when inflation is subtracted from nominal interest rates. Most central banks control a short, risk-free nominal interest rate – the so-called policy rate. This then affects other nominal market rates to households and companies with longer maturities. The nominal rate has a certain impact on household consumption and corporate investment and hence on demand in the economy. But perhaps an even more important role is played by the real interest rate. Monetary policy is considered to be able to affect the real interest rate in the short term. This is partly due to the fact that it can take time for companies to adapt their prices when demand changes. Via the real interest rate, the central bank can thus influence demand in the economy and by extension inflation. On the other hand, monetary policy is not considered to be able to affect the real interest rate over the longer term. Instead, it is then determined by other factors, such as demographic development, households’ valuation of consumption today compared with in the future, trend growth and, in smaller economies, also by the international real interest rate level. But the long-term real interest rate plays an even more important role for rate-setting. If it has fallen, the average policy rate needs to be lower in order to be able to uphold the inflation target.

But regulators cannot halt the advancement of technology just so that they are ready to regulate. In this situation, our challenge is to ensure that we keep pace with technology so that we are able to offer the required protection to all who access financial services using the new and unconventional payments systems. On our part, the Bank of Zambia shall focus its attention on the development of a robust regulatory framework that will address the key “hot button” issues of; 1. Prudential requirements; particularly those that relate to liquidity management and capital for infrastructure,  2. Consumer protection; with emphasis on disclosure of charges and confidentiality of customer information, and  3. Unfair trading practices particularly those related to monopolistic tendencies such as development of platform that are not compatible or not interoperable with platforms of other service providers. To strike a balance between a robust regulatory framework and the need for the framework not to hinder innovation and allow business to flourish, our efforts in establishing a robust  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  framework will therefore be anchored on five key or internationally accepted best practice principles. These are: 1. The need to identify the types of mobile payment platforms to be permitted;  2. The need for an efficient mobile payments infrastructure such as settlements systems;  3. The need to design rules to regulate the information communication technology platform which is itself rapidly evolving;  4. Consumer protection; and finally  5. The need for compliance monitoring.
After the licensing of Popular Bank, with Albanian capital, the number of banks increased from 15 to 16, and a preliminary license is granted to Union Bank, which is expected to raise the number of banks to 17 over 2005. The system assets have further increased by 14 percent while there was an increase of banking products and an expansion of their network. During this year there will be sold the public shares of both the Italian Albanian Bank and United Bank of Albania, which will lead to an increase of effectiveness and banking competition, paving the way to the processes of selling, merging and acquisitions towards a new consolidation of the banking system. The lending activity increased by 38 percent where one can distinguish inter alia the significant growth of medium-term and long-term loans compared to short-term loans. The map of coverage of the country with the banking system has further expanded, including new areas ever covered before. At the end of 2004, the total number of branches reached 88, or 11 branches more that the end of the previous year, while the number of agencies recorded for the first time a full three-digit number, 100 and the number of the employed people increased by 26 percent. BIS Review 44/2005  1  The high increase of the number of branches relative to agencies shows that banks are not interested only in providing the service of collecting deposits but also in providing other products like crediting to the economy.

But in a world in which capital flows freely, local attempts to control the pace of credit creation, particularly within the financial system, may not work. All of that will need to be thought through. But first we need to concentrate on the immediate challenges. Summary In a speech four months ago, I stressed that “we must try to avoid a vicious circle in which tighter liquidity conditions, lower asset values, impaired capital resources, reduced credit supply, and slower aggregate demand feed back on each other”. I identified monetary policy, liquidity policy, and regulatory capital policy as being amongst the instruments the authorities would need to use. That remains the case, as the stress in the global financial system has  4  BIS Review 38/2008  continued and, in the US at least, evidence of a feedback loop is apparent. Each of those instruments is constrained in some degree. That underlines the need for close co-operation between the authorities and the industry, and internationally. BIS Review 38/2008  5
Despite strong growth in the past several quarters, the weakness of the developed countries will eventually erode their dynamism, a situation that is already apparent in some countries. However, unlike the developed economies, the emerging world has more space to implement economic policies that help mitigate the effects of the worsened external scenario. Chile has this capacity too. Actually, according to several international assessments, Chile is among the best suited to confront such a scenario. Our country has made progress in recent decades to build an economic policy framework, which has already given proof of its capacity to properly deal with a difficult conjuncture. If necessity demands it, we have the capacity to adopt the necessary measures to mitigate the effects of the global crisis on our economy. The lessons learned from the experience of 2008–2009 give us a positive edge. The external impulse that our economy will be receiving in the coming quarters will be smaller than we thought just a few months back. However, we must not forget that still our relative position in the world is favorable. We have managed to diversify the destinations of our exports and China is now our main client. The copper price and the terms of trade, although not as good as some months ago, are still high from a historical perspective. Our country risk is low and, although our external financing cost has risen in recent weeks, it is still lower than it was in previous years ago.

The IFRS Foundation plans to set up by the end of this year an International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) as a global standard setter. An IFRS work group is already developing a prototype climate reporting standard. The IFRS work group’s recommendations on the prototype will be reviewed by a technical expert group co-chaired by MAS and the US Securities and Exchange Commission, under IOSCO’s Sustainable Finance Taskforce. The expert group will assess if the prototype could be a basis for developing the ISSB’s standards. MAS and SGX will set out roadmaps for mandatory climate-related financial disclosures by financial institutions and listed entities respectively. The roadmap will take a phased approach. A more ambitious timeline can be considered for listed entities that are larger or more exposed to climate risks. Larger financial institutions can similarly be prioritised. These details will be worked out in consultation with the industry in the coming months. SGX will soon consult the industry on making climate-related reporting in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). SGX already subjects listed entities to annual sustainability reporting on a “comply or explain” basis, but without specifying any particular framework for them to follow. The TCFD recommendations provide a good baseline disclosure framework. They have gained broad acceptance internationally and will be the basis for future ISSB climate reporting standards. MAS will consult the industry later this year on mandatory climate-related disclosures by financial institutions.