5  Transfers in the main sterling payment systems are settled gross in real time across the Bank’s balance sheet. For members of the real-time system, no credit exposures amongst them arise. Transfers between smaller banks are settled across the balance sheets of big commercial banks. The banking sector would probably be more resilient if all banks joined the RTGS system. 2  BIS Review 67/2009  commercial banking system. Up to a point, the same goes for the abundant liquidity in asset markets that preceded the crisis. Of course, persistently strong demand for financial assets – crudely, rising prices – created liquidity. But, beyond that, the willingness and terms on which “market-makers” and traders underpinned liquidity depended on generous access to credit for financing inventory and positions. And the ultimate private sector providers of such credit are always the commercial banks. 6 So commercial banks are special. They are special because their deposit liabilities are money. But they are also inherently fragile. First, as monetary institutions, the liquidity insurance they provide, via demand deposits and committed on-demand lines of credit, entails large mismatches between the maturities of their liabilities and assets (actual and contingent). The accompanying conversion of liquid savings into illiquid loans to households and firms benefits society. But it also exposes the banks to big liquidity risks. Given a first come-first served system of redemption for retail and wholesale deposits, that creates the risk of runs.

Marzunisham Omar: Statistical science for a better tomorrow Welcoming remarks by Mr Marzunisham Omar, Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the International Statistical Institute Regional Statistics Conference 2014 “Statistical Science for a Better Tomorrow”, Kuala Lumpur, 17 November 2014. *  *  *  Good morning, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I am pleased to welcome you to this inaugural ISI Regional Statistics Conference 2014 on “Statistical Science for a Better Tomorrow”. Bank Negara Malaysia is most honoured to jointly host this event, together with the International Statistical Institute and its South East Asia Regional Network, the Department of Statistics Malaysia, and the Malaysia Institute of Statistics. Today, we have more than 500 statistical researchers, practitioners, policymakers and users of statistics from around 40 countries. With such diversity of participants, I believe the conference provides an excellent platform for the participants to share insights on the application of statistical science for knowledge discovery, innovation and policy. The importance of statistics cannot be overstated. The formulation of decisions – by individuals, businesses and especially policymakers – is as good as the statistics collected and the capacity to interpret the data. While the need for accurate and reliable statistics is common across all fields of study, two other requirements for the compilation and analysis of economic and finance-related statistics can be considered to be rather unique. The first is timeliness, given the rapid pace in which economic and financial developments can change.