samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
12/02/2021  "Pushing Ahead with SOR-SORA Transition in 2021" - Keynote Speech by Mr Leong Sing Chiong, Deputy Managing Director (Markets …  Speeches  Published Date: 02 February 2021  "Pushing Ahead with SOR-SORA Transition in 2021" - Keynote Speech by Mr Leong Sing Chiong, Deputy Managing Director (Markets & Development), Monetary Authority of Singapore, at ASIFMA Virtual Event: Singapore IBOR Transition on 2 February 2021 1 Good morning everyone. First, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Let me also thank the Asia Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (ASIFMA) and the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) for organising this webinar and inviting me to speak on the important issue of Singapore’s interest rate benchmark transition. 2 In the next 20 mins or so, I will do a brief recap of the key objectives and milestones that we had set out last year. I will then touch on some recent developments in the US and UK that have a bearing on our transition timelines, and I will finally outline what our priorities are for this year in the transition to Singapore Overnight Rate Average (SORA). Recap 3 Back in 2019, the financial industry in Singapore, represented by the ABS and the Singapore Foreign Exchange Market Committee (SFEMC) [1] , assessed that given the eventual discontinuation of USD London Interbank Oﬀered Rate (LIBOR) and SGD Swap Oﬀer Rate (SOR), the most sustainable and sensible path was to transition aﬀected SOR markets to SORA.

From there, I strongly urge banks to work with your customers to take advantage of the good liquidity in both SOR and SORA markets in the next 6-12 months to proactively transition legacy contracts. 26 If we manage to front load this work early and transition the substantive bulk of legacy books by early 2022, this will leave ample time for us to deal with any residual tough legacy transactions. That would be a good place to be in, when we meet again this time next year. 27  Thank you very much, I wish you all fruitful discussions for the rest of this webinar. ***  [1] The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) is a non-profit organisation that represents the interests  of the commercial and investment banking community. The Singapore Foreign Exchange Market Committee (SFEMC) aims to foster the growth and development of Singapore as a leading global financial centre in Asia, with a specific focus on foreign exchange, money markets, fixed income and derivative markets. https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/speeches/2021/pushing-ahead-with-sor-sora-transition-in-2021  6/7  12/02/2021  "Pushing Ahead with SOR-SORA Transition in 2021" - Keynote Speech by Mr Leong Sing Chiong, Deputy Managing Director (Markets …  [2] The Steering Committee for SOR & SIBOR Transition to SORA or SC-STS is an industry-led Steering  Committee tasked with overseeing the transition from SOR to SORA. The SC-STS is chaired by Mr Samuel Tsien, Group CEO of OCBC Bank and ABS Chairman. [3] See relevant announcements here .
SPEECH DATE:  4 June 2018  SPEAKER:  Stefan Ingves  VENUE:  Stockholm School of Economics  SVERIGES RIKSBANK SE-103 37 Stockholm (Brunkebergstorg 11) Tel +46 8 787 00 00 Fax +46 8 21 05 31 registratorn@riksbank.se www.riksbank.se  Money and payments – where are we heading? Today, I am going to talk about money. This is a subject that concerns us all – most of us use money practically every day. But we probably don’t give much thought to how important it is that our daily purchases can be carried out smoothly. It's more or less the same as not giving so much thought to your health as long as you’re healthy. But once you get sick, it becomes almost the only thing you can think about. Our system for payments is similar; as long as it works securely and efficiently, we don’t think about it. And, to continue the analogy: It is the Riksbank's task to ensure that the payment system remains healthy and contributes to a well-functioning society. Right now, we, at the Riksbank, are devoting a lot of time to issues regarding payments and the payment system. The background to this is formed by the rapid changes on the payment market and the rapid decrease in cash usage in Sweden – a development that we are practically alone in, worldwide. Only a few other countries are undergoing a similar, albeit less dramatic, development.

However, not all incumbent banks are able to fully bridge the technology gap, particularly for newer services; d. This results in migration towards digitally-focused challenger banks such as Atom, Fidor and Monzo that will provide similar services of traditional banks, but utilise technology to deliver faster and cheaper services that better meet the needs of customers; and e. The implication of this is that the landscape of finance will remain largely filed by banks, but a new breed of purely digital banks will gain in significance. The names that we immediately think of for financial services will change from the current banks that we are so familiar with. The fourth scenario is what I call ‘the Tech take-over’ a. Like scenario one, this is a more extreme and less probable scenario, but still one that is worth a thought. In this scenario, technology adoption by incumbent banks is low, with a high level of fragmentation among finance providers; b. However, in contrast to scenario three, technology firms enter as the new preferred provider, successfully capturing the loyalty of consumers due to superior ability in using data to deliver customer-centric solutions; c. Financial services will thus be offered via a wide range of providers such as social networks (e.g. Facebook, Wechat) and e-commerce platforms (e.g. Amazon, Alibaba); and d. Growing comfort with the ability of technology to ensure secured transactions also gives rise to the popularity of peer-to-peer financial services.
It’s also crucial because it complements, on the one hand, the fiscal stimuli launched by national governments, and on the other, the rapid and powerful intervention by the ECB since the start of this crisis. With all these measures now in 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  play, Europe is better equipped to respond to this unprecedented crisis. The agreement includes a generic reference to a future recovery fund that is yet to be defined. What criteria do you think it should meet? The ECB has always stressed the need for our Economic and Monetary Union to be completed in order for the euro area to become more resilient. On the one hand, we need a European deposit insurance scheme so that savings have the same protections in every country. We’ve also called for progress in capital markets so that euro area firms have access to more sources of funding. And in the fiscal sphere, we need a shared budgetary instrument that completes the monetary union. The fund that has been proposed could go in that direction, but its size and how it is funded remain open to discussion and will depend on future decisions by governments. In any case, the determination to present a shared response is very significant, because it is a strong political signal, and also a strong signal to the markets. Spain started the debate when it too voiced its opposition to the use of the ESM.

Our challenge, therefore, is to evolve successfully in the face of this shift and it is a philosophy that the HKMA has been actively pursuing in the past few years – exploring new policy headroom, improving our financial infrastructure, promoting Hong Kong’s offshore renminbi business in overseas markets in collaboration with the financial industry, and co-operating with other places, such as London, Paris, Australia, Malaysia and Thailand in developing renminbi business. A competition of soft power among international financial centres 11. As I have emphasised on many occasions, the competition among international financial centres is essentially a battle of soft power. That is not to say hard power is not important. Quite the opposite, the building of hard infrastructure such as airports, transportation system, telecommunications, and efficient offices, is a prerequisite for entering the race. Yet it can only go so far. Funds, especially at the wholesale level, tend to flow to and aggregate in the more efficient and safe financial centres. Therefore, the race ultimately depends on soft power, which is made up of a wide range of qualities and strengths that are difficult to quantify. They include, the most important of all, the rule of law, protection of property rights and intellectual property, the taxation regime, the soundness of financial institutions, the robustness of supervisory frameworks, the competency and integrity of professionals, such as financial practitioners, accountants and lawyers, the free flow of information, the free and convenient movement of people, and a favourable business environment.
CLAR provides a regular opportunity for supervisors to respond to evolving liquidity risks and firm practices over time. See Tarullo (2014) for more detail. 19  See Eisenbach et al. (2015). BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  monetary policy implementation frameworks. We should carefully consider the incentives any of our tools create. Instead, the message I would like to convey is that there may be benefits to specialization among complementary functions of the central bank. Making sure that banks don’t take excessive liquidity risk is a core role of supervision, and supervisors are likely to be much better at this task than the staff of market operations departments. Providing liquidity to financial markets in real time, to make sure money markets remain connected, that the stance of monetary policy is appropriately transmitted to the real economy, and to support financial stability, is a core role of market operations departments. A long history of financial crises has shown that central banks can add liquidity to the system when it is most needed, especially at time when private institutions are unable to do so. Balance sheet normalization My discussion so far has focused on the longer-run. However, the current situation also needs to be taken into account: Today, many advanced economy central banks find themselves in a situation where their policy rate is at or close to zero, and policy accommodation is being added or maintained by asset purchases and forward guidance.

Banking system and supervision  The Albanian banking system has faced numerous challenges over the recent years and has succeeded in overcoming them, always maintaining sound parameters of liquidity and capitalisation. Even in 2011, banking system activity was conducted in an unfavourable context of international financial markets and the sluggish demand for loans and economic growth at home. Regardless of these factors, banks in Albania remained well capitalised and healthy. Economic growth slowdown was reflected in moderate performance of crediting and increase in non-performing loans, whereas bank liquidity condition improved. During 2011, prudence for monitoring the banking system was heightened for early identification of potential risks, and the regulatory framework was consolidated. Stress-test results show that the banking system remained stable and resilient to large shocks on macroeconomic indicators and parameters. Following, I would like to focus on several main indicators of the banking system in 2011, as this system remains the main actor of financial intermediation in Albania. Banking system highlights At end-2011, the banking system assets accounted for about 85% of GDP, from about 81% at end-2010. Financial profit of the banking system was downward, with a significant increase in provisioning expenses playing a determinant role. In the framework of absorbing any potential losses from credit risk, the banking sector increased the provisioning by about 52.4% from a year earlier. By contrast, net operating profit was up by about 7.7%, which shows that the banks have generally achieved a stable net profit and volume from their core activities.
The incident may also raise some questions about how effectively market forces are acting to restrain those taking outsized risk positions, something that I will return to in a moment. Taken together, these developments provide a strong baseline for financial stability. But the risks that we pointed to in July are still there. In particular, we pointed to the risk that financial firms concerned about losing market share in rapidly expanding markets might pay less attention than they should to their resilience to unexpected shocks. [Chart 1] gives our assessment of developments since July. It shows that a number of the vulnerabilities have edged up a little as leveraged buy-out (LBO) activity and commercial property lending have grown and as the number of personal insolvencies has increased. On the other hand, the slowdown in the US economy and the beginning of a narrowing in its trade balance may have reduced the risks on that side, although we didn’t judge this material enough to change our overall assessment. BIS Review 124/2006  1  We know how easy and how fruitless it can be to draw up long lists of things that could go wrong without paying attention to their likelihood. So we try to take a balanced view that recognises not just what could go wrong but also recognises changes that we think have a positive impact on financial stability.

For example, traders on the CCI-ILSTC have to rely on the multi-modal transport bill of lading or MTBL as proof of title as the goods are being carried on land, by rail, and over sea. However, the MTBL is currently not widely used as a negotiable document, unlike ordinary bills of lading which have clear legal status. This limits the access to trade financing facilities for importers and exporters using multimodal trade routes. We must step up efforts to enhance the acceptance of MTBLs amongst trade players in China and ASEAN. In fact, the MTBL will need to be recognised as a negotiable document, not only in its paper form but also its electronic form. Government agencies from Singapore are working with the Chongqing Port and Logistics Office to conduct a pilot to digitalise bills of lading, including the MTBL, using TradeTrust. TradeTrust is an interoperable framework to support the exchange of electronic documents. It uses distributed ledger technology to allow trade actors to establish the authenticity of a digital document. If we can scale the use of TradeTrust within the CCI-ILSTC, banks will be able to use these electronic documents for trade financing and we can effectively eliminate the risk of 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  fraudulent MTBLs. More broadly, the greater use of electronic trade documents will make verification checks easier, reduce the incidence of fraud and human error, and ultimately lower costs. But to achieve this, all stakeholders need to adopt digital tools and upgrade their trade practices.
A central authority and a national repository can significantly improve the ability to better distribute, monitor and manage the supply-demand imbalances. Developing a thriving rental market should also be on the agenda to temper the nation’s fixation on home ownership. Another issue that banks should be concerned with is the sizable surplus in commercial property. In contrast to affordable housing, the office and retail markets are in oversupply. In 2016, the vacancy rate for prime office space in the Klang Valley stood at 21.8%, outstripping the regional average of 6.2%1. Monthly rentals of prime office space in Kuala Lumpur are the lowest among regional cities. Over the next few years, the significant incoming supply of large projects is likely to aggravate supply conditions in this segment. Signs of oversupply are also emerging in the retail segment in major urban centres in Malaysia. This can be traced to the abundance of shopping malls. You may be surprised to learn that there are as many as twenty shopping malls just along the 40km stretch of the LDP highway. It is equally astonishing that the prime retail space per capita in cities like Johor, Penang and Kuala Lumpur is actually higher than regional megacities such as Shanghai and Beijing, and also higher income cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong. A significant increase in vacancy rates, and the ensuing price corrections, are risks that the Bank has highlighted as far back as 2013.

This requires banks to have a finger on the pulse of the economy, to closely observe the micro transformations that are taking place, and to keep abreast of future financing opportunities, particularly in new areas of growth. To this end, banks will need to think ahead and begin to invest in developing the organisational capacity to study, distill and generate innovative solutions to effectively and efficiently meet new financing needs. With the development of alternative financing such as crowd funding, P2P, private equity, venture capital, factoring and leasing, it will be imperative for banks to consider how they can complement and support these arrangements more effectively. We are living in interesting times, shaped by forces that bring to the fore contrasts in economic and financial developments. These developments have important implications on how we govern, do business and engage externally. It has never been more important for the banking industry to be more engaged, agile and responsive. I do believe that our banks are well-placed to adapt to changes going forward. It is incumbent on the banking industry to continue to strengthen its foundations and address gaps that may appear through business and economic cycles. Banks cannot be oblivious to the changing tide. Our economic prosperity is very much influenced by the ability of the industry to play its intermediating role effectively.
It is instead a qualitative judgement about the credibility and feasibility of the different types of resources of a CCP to absorb loss and replenish its going concern requirements. CCPs have different liability structures from banks and therefore the assessment of the absorbency of these structures and the appropriateness of additional forms of LAC is more likely to be different from banks than it is to be the same. That assessment of LAC will need to consider the extent to which unfunded commitments from members can be relied upon given the procyclicality of calling for them in stressed circumstances. It means assessing the credibility of allocating losses via cash calls or variation margin haircutting and the incentives that this generates in clearing members and clients to continue to clear through the CCP. And it also means looking not just at loss absorbency for clearing member default but also at the CCP’s capacity to absorb losses and recapitalise where a loss springs from operational or other losses not covered in full by loss allocation arrangements with its members. Point of entry to resolution One issue that is necessarily intertwined with the question of resources is the point of entry into resolution. As I have described, resolution is a financial reconstruction. For it to be effective it cannot be exercised only once the financial resources in a firm have already been exhausted.

Some reporting and disclosure requirements were extended, reducing the operational burden on banks; and some market risk-based capital requirements that were deemed to have moved excessively during the episode were offset.1 At the same time, fiscal authorities began to provide support to economies entering lockdown. In the UK, that included government guarantees for lending to the corporate sector as well as income support schemes for employees furloughed as businesses shut or scaled back their activities. The size of the policy response was huge. Across the US, Euro Area, UK and Japan, central bank assets increased by around $ trillion in 2020, more than twice their increase in the year following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And, according to the IMF, by mid-March 2021, global pandemic-related fiscal support measures totalled $ trillion (around 19% of world GDP).2 This is at least twice as large as the fiscal response observed during the Global Financial Crisis. In 2020 alone, average overall fiscal deficits reached 11.7% of GDP for advanced economies, the largest measure the IMF has recorded since they began gathering data. As a result of all of these interventions, conditions stabilised. There was no credit crunch: credit provision to businesses increased by more than 10% during 2020.
We have had considerable benefit of households and companies, savers and investors, expecting a future rate of inflation that is on a reasonably low level and that their expectations are more or less consistent with one another. This has contributed to a completely different stability in price setting and wage formation over the past two decades than in the two decades prior to this, which has in turn contributed to inflation falling at the same time as we have had more stable and much higher real wages on average. That high and fluctuating inflation has disappeared as a disturbing factor should also have meant that financial decisions by households and companies have in general become simpler and better. But the key to this type of development is a joint anchoring of inflation expectations and a condition for this is that the inflation target of 2 per cent is perceived as credible. This is the problem that has marked the Riksbank's monetary policy in recent years. In January 2015, when I became a member of the Executive Board, we were in an unfortunate situation where inflation expectations in the longer run were losing their anchorage around the 2 per cent target. Monetary policy had been expansionary for a long time and further measures were needed to strengthen confidence in the target and to send very clear signals about the Riksbank’s intentions to bring inflation back to 2 per ce nt.

To begin with, households are more negatively affected by an expansionary monetary policy that increases inflation if they have a relatively large share of assets that have poor or little protection against inflation. Cash is of course the most obvious example, even if it may in this context be of less significance for the wealth distribution, given how the use of cash has declined in Sweden. The real value of all assets and liabilities is of course affected by how high inflation is and I have earlier mentioned the redistribution between borrowers and lenders as an effect of an unexpectedly high or low inflation rate. An unexpected increase in inflation, for instance, that monetary policy has become more e xpansionary than expected, reduces the real value of assets and liabilities. This can, for instance, benefit households with relatively large debts on houses and  8 [14]  apartments, but disadvantage low income households who rent their homes. Households with large financial assets are also disadvantaged, but they are perhaps more used to, and better able to, adapting their assets to avoid the inflation risk. Hence, to study the distributional effects linked to increased capital income, it would be interesting to see how assets and liabilities are distributed between households. When it comes to liabilities, there are relatively good statistics available, but with regard to the distribution of various assets, we are unfortunately fumbling in the dark to some extent.