samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The quality of loans has improved due to more prudent underwriting and capital levels appropriately support the risk profile. As of 4Q 2018 on average, Second District ratios were slightly above the national peer average for tier 1 and total risk-based capital ratios. In terms of profitability, return on average assets was 0.95% in 2018 for community banks in the Second District, only slightly trailing the national average of 1.1% for all community banks. Another relevant metric is the more diversified loan mix on the balance sheets of community banks. Commercial Real Estate (CRE) is a major source of asset growth, and in our geography, real estate continues to be in high demand and continues to outperform certain parts of the country. For example, in the Second District non-owner occupied CRE concentration remains higher than the national peer average. Our examiners, however, have noted more robust risk management practices and oversight, and commensurate levels of capital as mentioned earlier. As supervisors, we will continue to stress to the region’s bankers that a financial institution’s decision to assume certain types of risk is a decision for the Board of Directors and senior management. Also, as supervisors, we will continue to expect to see the appropriate level of risk management in place to manage and mitigate the risks assumed. This means having the appropriate expertise on the management team, robust information systems and technologies to monitor and manage those risks, proper controls and oversight, reasonable limits, and an action plan to take corrective measures when necessary.

All business decisions have risks and there must be mitigating strategies in place to manage adverse occurrences. Hearing your input and perspectives on these issues is an important part of the process for us, and I am fortunate to have the opportunity to meet with many community bankers in the Second District. Some of the most common themes I hear include: an appreciation for the recent regulatory reforms implemented such as the streamlining of the Call Report; the extension of the examination cycle to 18-month for firms under $ billion in total asset-size; and the current discussions around capital simplification. The comment period on capital simplification will close on April 9th, and I hope you all shared input to influence that important policy decision. 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  One area where we receive mixed feedback from bankers is the issue of off-site examinations. Some bankers love that idea, while others have stated they like the face-to-face interaction as it reduces the risk of miscommunication, misinterpretations or ambiguities. Still others prefer a hybrid approach with certain portions of examination work conducted on-site and others off-site. All felt critical meetings should be conducted in person. Today’s technology makes all of these options possible, and we will continue to exercise judgment and thoughtful communication with bankers to determine the best option. At the end of the day, our shared goal is a fair and accurate assessment for your institution, and we will continue to work together to accomplish this.
Attackers can carry out sophisticated and prolonged attacks that can be difficult to identify and defend against. According to a study by FireEye, the median time it takes to detect a cyber intrusion is 78 days. We need some common risk management standards in cyber defence. The risk management systems in financial institutions and regulatory and supervisory frameworks for cyber resilience are uneven and still evolving. There is no international equivalent of the Basel Capital Accord in cyber risk management. But given the clear and present danger that cyber risk poses, MAS has put in place a mix of mandatory requirements and best practice guidelines in this area. Given their role as repositories of public monies and conduits for payments, banks in particular must meet higher cyber security standards. MAS expects banks to: limit unscheduled system downtime of their critical IT systems to not more than 4 hours within a year; conduct due diligence on third-party service providers’ controls to safeguard customer information; and report all significant cyber incidents to MAS within one hour. But cyber risk management should go beyond banks. The connectedness among participants in the financial system means that a cyber-attack on one party can potentially escalate into a more systemic problem. We need to level up the cyber resilience of all financial institutions, not necessarily to the level of banks but at least to a basic level – what we call cyber hygiene.

Importantly, the roadmap incorporates a framework where individual actions are taken forward by the most suitable expert bodies, in accordance with their mandates, with the FSB providing coordination and reporting annually on progress to the G20 and the public. Many of the building blocks are owned by CPMI and the FSB, but the IMF, FATF, World Bank and BIS Innovation Hub are also among the owners/co-owners. 6 7  Source Euromoney (2019) - https://www.euromoney.com/article/b1h6r02s16dnf9/removing-frictions-in-cross-border-payments https://www.fsb.org/2020/10/enhancing-cross-border-payments-stage-3-roadmap/ 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  5  The Bank of England is already making progress in a number of these areas  To bring some of these building blocks to life and to show you that there is already significant innovation underway, I will outline work the Bank of England is undertaking to address some of these challenges. The Bank is involved through a number of roles – as a payment system operator, a supervisor of firms and of financial market infrastructures, and through our overriding mission to promote the good of the people of the UK by maintaining monetary and financial stability. My focus today will be on our role as an operator, and  in particular the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service Renewal Programme of which I am the Executive Sponsor.
The new information leads us to estimate that global growth will fall short of expectations, because of both downward corrections to projected activity in the developed world and a major adjustment in Latin America, which is headed to a contraction in 2016. At the same time, the external financial conditions relevant for Chile are estimated to be tighter, while the terms of trade will be lower (figure 2 and table 1). BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  The downscaling in output projections for 2016 is consistent with the lower base at the end of 2015, and with spot indicators suggesting that consumption and investment have remained weak this year to date. On the consumption side, in the last two years the real wage bill has been outgrowing private consumption, leading us to expect a somewhat stronger recovery of the latter during this year. This has not happened, however, which together with the sharper deterioration of the labor market in recent months, plus consumers’ expectations remaining pessimistic and low levels of imports of consumer goods in the first months of the year, mean that this component of growth has to be revised downward. However, by 2017 some recovery of this variable is expected, thanks to a gradual improvement in its fundamentals, particularly, moderate growth in the wage bill and a slight improvement in consumer expectations. Investment, on the other hand, has seen a significant adjustment in recent years, due primarily to the end of the mining investment cycle (figure 3).

In 1995, the monetary strategy of stable exchange rate of the denar was formalized – a strategy for which then and now there is a broad consensus that it is one of the key pillars of the stability of the Macedonian economy. The benefits of macroeconomic stability have been enjoyed for 24 years. Our economy is small, commercial and financially open and hence, prone to external shocks. Despite the numerous external and internal shocks, the National Bank constantly succeeds to keep inflation at a moderate level, which is similar to the European level. Low inflation is extremely important for the protection of the real purchasing power of citizens, but also for maintaining the competitiveness of our exports without which small economies like ours can not achieve higher and sustainable growth. The maintenance of low and stable inflation, as the main goal of the central bank, is underpinned by the stable exchange rate of the domestic currency against the euro. The prudent monetary policy, as well as the good coordination with other macroeconomic policies, led to an almost continuous growth of the foreign reserves, which today are at the highest historical level and directly strengthen the exchange rate stability. Confirmation of the soundness of the policies implemented by the National Bank is a historic step in providing access to European Central Bank’s foreign exchange liquidity. The key to the successful attainment of the goals of the National Bank so far is its strong institutional capacity which has been built for years.
This means that the value of the work performed decreased, as did the scope for higher real wages. Table 1. Capital intensity and productivity growth Industry  Business sector  Capital/ employee  Productivity  Capital/ employee  Productivity  1963-70  8.3%  7.6%  6.5%  5.3%  1970-80  6.3%  3.4%  6.2%  3.2%  1980-86  2.8%  3.2%  3.0%  2.0%  Source: Own calculations  The previous diagram also shows that the level of capital formation in relation to our total resources that we had during the 1960s has not returned but that the fluctuations have been larger after the mid 1970s. On average we have remained at approximately one-third of the level of resources that we previously had allocated to new capital. One difference is that saving has increased, but not investment. This means that we are exporting capital. Despite a continuation of relatively low capital formation, the weak trend seen in total Swedish labour productivity in recent years was broken during the first half of the 1990s when productivity growth increased. But it was other factors than capital formation that contributed to this. Among other things, the economic crisis at the beginning of the 1990s led to substantial rationalisation measures and the winding up of low-productivity operations, which resulted in increased productivity growth but also high unemployment. During the same period, there was also a shift in Swedish economic policy in order to create conditions for more sustainable long-term economic growth.

It is also important that economic policy is focused on finding ways to reduce the distortional effects of the tax and benefit system, not least as regards people’s willingness to work and the motivation of entrepreneurs to start up new businesses within all Swedish industries. It is mainly an increase in productivity that lays the foundations for long-term growth. Thus, a fundamental precondition for success is to re-establish a high rate of capital formation and thereby the introduction of new technology. But we do not primarily need to increase saving, since we have a substantial current account surplus. Investment in Sweden could replace capital exports. The evolution of basic industries also demonstrates that investment in R&D has the potential to yield considerable productivity gains and that old industrial sectors do not have to be written off. Therefore, it is important that we do not lose our traditionally successful basic industries and only focus on ICT and biotechnology, not to mention the so-called creative industries. Our basic industries  8  BIS Review 56/2003  have demonstrated their staying power; they have coped with major structural change and are growing steadily. They are also the industries in Swedish business that, compared with their counterparts in other countries, have come furthest in terms of technological level, productivity and innovation. So there is also scope for an expansion of the capital-intensive basic industries. Allow me to conclude by saying that we certainly have the potential to be among the best again.
As long as economic resources are mobile this is  Chart 8a: In the short run there are diminishing  probably a reasonable thing to do. When thinking  returns to scale  about what determines supply capacity at the level of an individual sector we generally think the process exhibits what are called “constant returns to scale”. If you double all the resources involved you double potential output. So in Chart 8a the response of output to demand looks like a straight line. And the nice thing about this is that, if we add up demand across a lot of sectors it doesn’t matter what the distribution of that demand looks like. Demand in individual sectors can move anywhere along that straight line and all that will matter for total output is the total amount of spending5. But economic resources aren’t perfectly mobile, not in the short run at least. Even if people can move relatively quickly from one job to another, it takes time to repurpose a building and to retrain an employee. And when some of those capital resources are slow to move supply looks more like the curved line in Chart 8a: there are “diminishing returns to scale”. This implies that shifts in demand can, even for a given aggregate, lower aggregate supply. Chart 8b is meant to get this across. Suppose two sectors start with the same level of demand D and that they each have the right level of resources.

The Central Bank’s effective policy rate has fallen from 18% (the seven-day collateralised lending rate) at the beginning of 2009 to the current 4½% (the average of the current account rate and the maximum CD rate), and is now at an all-time low in the nearly 50-year history of the Central Bank of Iceland. Progress has also been made in improving Iceland’s external liquidity position by expanding the foreign exchange reserves, which reduces concerns about the Treasury’s ability to service its foreign debt in coming years. Repurchases of the Treasury’s foreign debt have also helped. The foreign exchange reserves exclusive of short-term obligations could quickly grow to over 3 billion euros, if Iceland draws in full on the loans contingent upon the third IMF review and when payments on the Avens agreement and the sale of Danish bank FIH are remitted. In comparison, the Icelandic Treasury’s payments of instalments and interest on two bond series maturing in 2011 and 2012, less repurchases, amount to 1.1 billion euros. This positive development explains the relatively upbeat outlook of foreign bankers and analysts towards Iceland, as could be discerned at the annual meetings of the IMF. It also explains why the CDS spread on sovereign debt has fallen in recent months and now lies below that of the European countries whose public debt problems have dominated business media recently. But we have to do better if Icelandic companies are to gain access to foreign credit markets on acceptable terms.
Jean-Pierre Danthine: Presentation of the Swiss National Bank’s Financial Stability Report Introductory remarks by Mr Jean-Pierre Danthine, Vice Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Media News Conference of the Swiss National Bank, Berne, 18 June 2015. *  *  *  As my colleague Thomas Jordan has explained, global economic growth in the first quarter of 2015 was below expectations. However, over the last 12 months, we have seen an improvement in international economic and financial conditions, although substantial risks remain. The domestic environment has become more challenging due to the strong appreciation of the Swiss franc that followed the discontinuation of the minimum exchange rate in January 2015. Against this background, I would like to examine the situation at Swiss banks from a financial stability perspective, looking first at the big banks and then moving on to a discussion of domestically focused banks. A more detailed assessment of the situation can be found in the latest Financial Stability Report published today. Big banks Further improving resilience Over the past year, the Swiss big banks have continued to improve their capital situation, albeit at a slower pace than the year before. They already meet most of the requirements which will apply from 2019. While acknowledging the progress made, the SNB recommends that the big banks do not lose momentum in their efforts to improve their resilience. This is particularly warranted with regard to the leverage ratio.

Resilience needs to be further improved for three reasons: First, the big banks’ loss potential relative to their capitalisation continues to be substantial. Second, while the Swiss big banks’ risk-weighted capital ratios are above the average for large globally active banks, the same cannot yet be said for their leverage ratios. Third, it can be expected that regulatory developments at both international and national level will result in increased capital requirements. 1 The Swiss big banks should prepare for these developments. RWA problem identified, but not yet resolved In the capital regulation of banks, risk-weighted assets (RWA) play a key role. As mentioned in previous Financial Stability Reports, both markets’ and authorities’ confidence in RWA calculated using banks’ internal models has steadily declined. A number of studies have shown that, in some instances, model-based RWA do not properly reflect a bank’s economic risks.2 As a consequence, capital ratios calculated using model-based RWA may overstate the true level of resilience. 1  Based on the review of the Swiss “too big to fail” regulations by the group of experts on the further development of the financial market strategy (Brunetti group of experts), the Federal Council has instructed the Federal Department of Finance to prepare legal adjustments, which primarily concern more stringent capital requirements. Cf. media release of the Federal Council, 18 February 2015. 2  For instance, international studies have revealed significant differences in RWA between banks using the model-based approach.
MAS has been working closely with financial institutions, institutes of higher learning, and other government agencies to expand our local talent pipeline and build a strong Singaporean Core. Let me clarify that a Singaporean Core strategy is not a “Singaporeans only” strategy. A “Singaporeans only” approach will be fatal for Singapore as a global financial centre as there are simply not enough locals to meet the fast-expanding specialist needs of financial institutions. Rather, promoting a strong Singaporean Core is about building good skills and capabilities in our local workforce and ensuring fair hiring opportunities. It is about helping to equip them to do well in their jobs and advance in their careers. MAS estimates that more than 3,000 Singapore Citizens held senior roles in the financial sector in 2020, a remarkable increase of more than 80% compared to 2016. The need for a strong local talent pipeline is something that the CEOs of global financial institutions in Singapore fully understand and agree with. A strong Singaporean Core gives ballast to their operations here and resilience in their staff capacity. It provides local and regional networks and a keen sense of customers and markets. Over the years, MAS has put in place several schemes to help develop entry level, professional, specialist and leadership talent for the financial sector. And we can do more. Let me highlight three areas of local talent that MAS is stepping up efforts in: polytechnic graduates; mid-career professionals from other sectors; and overseas Singaporeans working in finance and in technology. First, polytechnic graduates.

Major banks and insurers are accelerating their digital transformation and ramping up hiring in application development, data science, and artificial intelligence. Example: OCBC Bank recently announced that it plans to hire 1,500 technology staff over the next 3 years, with the majority of those positions to be based in Singapore. Bank of America has based one of its two overseas global cyber security centres in Singapore. The bank currently has more than 800 headcounts in Singapore focusing on technology. Another example is Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, which set up its first overseas innovation centre in Singapore. Likewise, global insurers like SCOR have established innovation labs in Singapore. Local insurers have invested heavily in technology too. Singapore has made a name for itself as providing one of the world’s most conducive environments for financial innovation. We are now home to over 50 global and regional innovation labs and more than 1,400 FinTech firms. Last year, we saw record high FinTech investments of $ billion last year, up from $ billion in 2020 [2] . Leading players at the forefront of digital asset innovation have anchored their operations in Singapore. JP Morgan has partnered DBS Bank and Temasek to establish Partior, which is a multi-currency, cross-border settlement platform, leveraging blockchain technology. R3, a global distributed ledger technology provider with roots as a banking consortium, has grown its innovation hub in Singapore to become the regional headquarters for Asia.