samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Jacqueline Loh: Technology and innovation as the next phase of growth Keynote address by Ms Jacqueline Loh, Deputy Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Opening of Metlife LumenLab, Singapore, 16 July 2015. *  *  *  Mr Blair Hall, Deputy Chief of Mission of US Embassy of Singapore Her Excellency, Ms Heather Grant, High Commissioner at the High Commission of Canada Mr Chris Townsend Mr Zia Zaman Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to join you this afternoon at this wonderful location for the official opening of MetLife’s LumenLab. MetLife and LumenLab Lumenlab represents a significant milestone for MetLife and Singapore. As MetLife’s first and only global innovation centre established in Singapore, LumenLab will shine the light forward on innovative and impactful solutions in health, wealth and longevity that are developed in Asia, for Asia, and for the rest of the world. Technology and innovation trends in the global insurance industry Technology and innovation is fundamentally changing the game for many industry verticals. The insurance sector is no exception. Specifically, new innovation and disruptive technologies are expected to transform the insurance industry in three areas: Distribution, Data Analytics, and Dynamic Products. Firstly, distribution. Today, the agent-broker paradigm is being challenged by the digital consumer, who is empowered by technology to conduct research and purchase directly from the product provider online. Here in Singapore, MAS started this journey ourselves with CompareFirst, which allows consumers to compare and purchase simple life insurance products over the internet.

Jaime Caruana: Latest progress on Basel II Inaugural address by Mr Jaime Caruana, Governor of the Bank of Spain and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, at the 5th Annual Risk Management Convention of the Global Association of Risk Professionals, New York, 24 February 2004. *  *  *  Introduction I would like to thank the organisers for inviting the Basel Committee to participate in GARP’s Risk Management Convention. Last year, you were kind enough to welcome as a keynote speaker Bill McDonough, the former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then the chairman of the Basel Committee. Today I am honoured to represent the Committee as Bill’s successor. The agenda for this week’s program demonstrates just how important and tough the job of a risk manager has become. Risk is no stranger to any business, and good business people have long sought ways to control their exposures to risk. Yet advances in technology and marketplace practices have sharpened our sense of the risks we face and of their potential costs should we fail to manage them. In recent years, for example, bankers have adopted an ever-widening array of databases, analytical tools, and sophisticated software packages to lend quantitative insight into risks that were once assessed mainly subjectively. Impressive advances have been achieved in measuring and managing exposures to market risk, credit risk and, more recently, operational risk.
Second, financial innovation contributes to an increased holding of financial assets by lowering transaction costs and facilitating arbitrage, hedging, funding and investment strategies. Third, financial innovation often relies on greater leverage, increasing the effect of interest rate moves by the central bank. However, in times of combination of financial stress and adverse supply shocks, such as we are now facing, the risk of destabilising highly-leveraged financial institutions of potential  BIS Review 15/2008  1  systemic importance could complicate the task of the monetary policymaker wishing to raise the policy rate in a timely manner so as to prevent inflationary risks from materialising. Besides, when conditions are less benign than usual, the transmission process along the interest rate curve may become non-linear: a striking feature of this summer’s events was the surge in short-term money market spreads in the euro area as well as in the United States and the United Kingdom. Wider and variable spreads between term funding rates, of which many bank loans are priced off, and policy rates are worrying in as much as they may reduce the efficiency of interest rate moves when needed. That said, as this situation stems from a sharp reduction in term liquidity due to a general fear of withdrawal among providers of liquidity, e.g. money market funds, its unwinding requires an appropriate provision of central bank liquidity to the short-term interbank markets but not necessarily a change in the policy stance.

In contrast to the enhancement of the interest rate channel, at least in normal times, financial innovation is traditionally expected to have weakened significantly the so-called bank lending channel. Financial innovation gives firms broader access to securities markets and, as such, makes them less dependent on bank funding. Similarly, banks may be more able to issue debt securities and less dependent on the constraint of funding themselves with secured deposits. Moreover, securitisation by banks was expected to alleviate their liquidity constraints and thus to further weaken the credit channel. Indeed, previous research has generally found that banks have used credit market innovations such as loan sales and securitisation to diversify credit risk exposures and increase lending. However, recent research has highlighted the potential for bank capital regulation and market discipline to shape a bank capital channel of monetary transmission. Viewed as an extension of the standard bank-firms agency problem to the relationship between banks and their creditors, this capital channel could reinforce the standard financial accelerator mechanism. This last concern is closely related to the fears of a credit crunch that have been voiced in the last six months. Current events show that the tide of financial innovation may recede and the future of the originate-and-distribute model of banking is a topic of renewed work. What we see now suggests that an unprecedented reintermediation process is underway, which might imply in the end a strengthening of the credit channel.
In the past few months, the concerns about the Eurozone have escalated, significantly raising the cost of public financing in some economies like Italy and Spain and, a little less so, France and Germany, among others. The problem has grown to a vicious circle from government’s financing costs to the bank’s financial situation to credit and liquidity conditions to economic growth. The lack of exchange rate adjustment mechanisms inside the Eurozone only aggravates the situation. Policy makers have been facing severe difficulties to implement structural and emergency measures to help contain the effects. The announcements of the European Union early in December are one first step in that direction, but there are elements that must be figured out  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  and the road to the solution is still uncertain and probably winding. The prospects for the rest of the developed world are not as bad, but not good either. Certainly their problems are not as severe as the Eurozone’s, but they are growing slowly and will not pick up for a long while. Consumers there are still in the process of cutting down their debts and governments need to begin a phase of austerity to try to make their sovereign debts sustainable. The emerging economies, without the problems of their developed counterparts, have been affected via their commercial and financial links with them.

Two factors played leading roles in that development. The first is the relatively large share of foreign-denominated loans – an average of 20% for households and 70% for businesses. The latter factor is an unusually strong exchange rate pass-through effect, which stems from the magnitude of the exchange rate drop and the lack of confidence that the króna would recover in the near future. As a result, the principal of indexed loans – which constitute about 70% of household debt and 10% of business debt – was written up. As is often the case in severe financial crises that are at the same time country crises, there was a genuine risk of a multi-faceted spiral of currency collapse, inflation, debt crisis, and economic contraction. It was critical to stave off such a vicious cycle, and therefore of vital importance to stabilise the exchange rate. BIS Review 146/2009  1  But this was problematic because of the large amount of capital that had accumulated in Iceland through carry trading during the economic upswing. Current estimates indicate that some 500 b.kr. remain in the Icelandic economy. There was the risk that this money would try to escape through a collapsed foreign exchange market, with unimaginable consequences for the exchange rate. Thus it was quite possible that astronomical interest rates would have been required if exchange rate stability were to be achieved through interest rate policy alone.
But as far as other durables are concerned, the pace of new buying has meant that the stock of them, relative to income, has been rising and is now significantly above average. This suggests that the current pace is unlikely to be maintained indefinitely (there are only so many cars and cookers you need). Chart 10. Shipping congestion has intensified in recent months though cost down a bit 80  Dollars (thousands)  Days  75 70  Chart 11. In the UK, recovery of consumer-facing services output suggests demand is rotating back, but some sectors lag behind Per cent change on 2019Q4  20  Average number of days (lhs)  18 Average freight rate (rhs)  16 14  65  12  60  10  55  8 6  50  Retail goods Hotels and restaurants Travel  4 45 40 Nov 18  2 Nov 19  Nov 20  Nov 21  Average number of days: end-to-end (factory to warehouse) shipments between China and the US. Average freight rate: shipments from China/East Asia to North America West Coast. Sources: Freightos.com and Freightos Baltic Index. Jan 20  Jun 20  Nov 20  Apr 21  20 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 -60 -70 -80 -90 -100  Sep 21  ‘Retail goods’ series is retail sales in volumes. The other series are output measures. Sources: ONS and Bank calculations.

As most of the empirical evidence points out, risk sharing channels are substantially weaker in the euro are than in other monetary unions, but also when compared with large countries inside the euro area, so that a larger share of idiosyncratic or national shocks to income cannot be smoothed out. Upgrading the efficiency of risk-sharing channels, both private and public, and better exploiting the synergies among them would provide the euro area with the shockabsorption capacity and the improved access to cross-border equity finance that is currently lacking. On the fiscal front, the euro area needs to achieve eventually a more complete fiscal union. Some form of semi-automatic cyclical insurance mechanism against asymmetric shocks could be designed to make it possible more risk-sharing without entailing permanent transfers between countries. Depending on modalities, such an instrument could also contribute to smooth aggregate shocks, achieve a more balanced policy mix and increasing sharing responsibilities with monetary policy. In addition, the EU rule-based fiscal framework needs to gain in simplicity and transparency. Recent proposals, which seek to give greater weight to public debt as a medium-term anchor and to the expenditure rule as an operational tool, deserve consideration. At the same time, increased national ownership should be fostered by enhancing the oversight role of independent fiscal authorities. The aim being to generate enough room for maneuver during good times, so that the stabilising capacity of fiscal policy may be larger at crisis times.
[11] They identified a number of channels through which QE influences asset prices and yields, including: (a) increasing demand for longer maturity or riskier assets (the ‘portfolio balance’ channel); (b) lowering market liquidity premia (the ‘liquidity’ channel); and (c) influencing expectations of future policy rates (the ‘signalling’ channel). For a moment, I will focus on the portfolio balance channel. QE entails buying government bonds from the market using central bank reserves created for the purpose. Let’s imagine for the time being that these bond purchases are made from asset managers such as insurance companies or pension companies (NBFIs), who indeed hold large quantities of such instruments. The implementation of QE shrinks NBFIs holdings of longer-term bonds and substitutes them with liquid, short-dated and capital certain assets (bank deposits) on NBFI balance sheets. For NBFIs to be willing to hold a larger proportion of money in their overall portfolio, other things equal the return to holding bonds rather than money must decline, implying a rise in government bond prices and thus a decline in sovereign bond yields. To the extent that NBFIs try to diversify out of money into other longer-term assets, they will also increase the price of those assets (and thereby raising equity prices and lowering corporate bond yields). In short, portfolio rebalancing in the aftermath of a QE operation weighs on yields and eases financial conditions. What is striking about this account of the transmission of QE is its fundamentally ‘monetarist’ nature.

He seemed to suggest that, were the role of money to be neglected and monetary policy become focused on shorter-term stabilisation of real economic variables, then the longer-term stability of inflation could be put at risks. With inflation already at undesirably elevated levels, the stakes are high. There is still much to do in thinking about whether and, if so, how monetary variables can help pin down the wider nominal dynamics of the economy and keep inflation at target sustainably and credibly over the medium term. So, to conclude, I return to the question asked at the outset: ‘What did the monetarists ever do for us?’ I doubt that monetarism will be (re) embraced by either the academic or central bank communities in the coming years. But – just like the Romans in the famous Monty Python sketch – maybe our understanding of how the monetary policy transmission mechanism has, does and will work owes more to them than we typically care to admit. The views expressed in this speech are not necessarily those of the Bank of England or the Monetary Policy Committee. I would particularly like to thank Ryland Thomas for his considerable help with the analytical work presented in the Annex and Saba Alam, Rich Harrison, Jack Meaning, Martin Seneca, Rashmi Harimohan, Bob Hills and  Page 16  Gavin Wallis for helpful discussions in the preparation of this speech.
Since the beginning of the year, domestic inflation has edged down, hovering around 1.3 per cent. Adjusted for the reduction in day-care rates in January this year, the year-on-year  2  BIS Review 80/2006  rise in domestic prices has been 1.6 per cent. The rise in prices has been lower than expected for both goods and services. There may be several factors behind the low inflation rate. Strong competition between various producers within the food industry and construction industry may have had a dampening impact on inflation. In addition, productivity growth in retail trade has been high in the past few years. Intensified competition may also have contributed to curbing the rise in prices for banking and insurance services. Several factors point to higher inflation in the period ahead. Capacity utilisation in the Norwegian economy is rising, which will push up the rise in prices for domestically produced goods and services. A tighter labour market will probably lead to higher wage growth in the coming years. The rise in oil prices is pushing up producer input costs. Increased electricity costs may also translate into higher prices for domestically produced goods and services. Outlook for the years ahead Monetary policy will increasingly have to reflect the constraints facing some Norwegian industries. Oil prices are of importance for the activity level in the Norwegian economy and central government revenues. In recent years, oil prices have risen sharply.

Currently, we have 21 remittance service providers offering digital remittance services, more than double the number 3 years ago. With the implementation electronic know-your-customer or e-KYC, consumers will be able to experience end-to-end digital remittance transactions. These are positive and exciting developments happening in our remittance market. Better public-private sector alliance to strengthen compliance Bank Negara Malaysia will continue to work closely with the industry to promote financial inclusion and this will be done primarily through the digitalization of remittance. Regulators also need to keep up with the times. We are taking a different approach this time – from ‘regulator instruct, industry do’ and ‘regulator knows best’, to creation of public-private sector alliance. It is vital to leverage on each other’s strengths and resources, not only to reap the benefits of technology, but also to overcome the emerging threats. We are all in this together. Greater harmonisation of regulatory framework on the remittance industry at the regional and 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  global levels is required to increase consistency in standards and reduce regulatory burdens on industry players. As a start, we have shared with other central banks on how we regulate the money services industry in Malaysia. This includes the transformation journey of MSB industry in Malaysia, our approach to innovation and technology, as well as monitoring of the whole industry. I believe that in the long term, harmonisation of rules will also foster innovation and spur regional expansion amongst industry players, while upholding the highest ethical and professional standards.
As regards payment systems, the TARGET system will also contribute to the rapid emergence of a unified money market throughout the euro area. TARGET will connect the domestic real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems operated by the national central banks. It will enable participants to make totally safe cross-border settlements in euro, in real time and at a low cost, thereby facilitating interest rate arbitrage. All large-value payments related to BIS Review 112/1997  -6-  monetary policy operations will have to process through TARGET. A common closing time for domestic RTGS and the harmonisation of conditions under which intraday liquidity will be provided by national central banks within the euro area should also help prevent any risk of segmentation of the single money market. 2.1.2. Interest rate volatility The EMI has described in various publications the set of monetary policy instruments that will be made available to the ESCB.7 This set will comprise open market operations, standing facilities and minimum reserves. It should fulfil two basic functions: firstly, to enable the ESCB to control efficiently its operational target; secondly, to signal the ESCB monetary policy stance. It should also be consistent with the requirement laid down in the Maastricht Treaty that the ESCB should act in accordance with the principle of an open market economy with free competition, favouring the efficient allocation of resources.

It is not the same to have reached an inflation goal of less than 2% for one year as for ten years. One of the benefits that the “peripheral countries” could reap from participating in the first wave of monetary union is to achieve the level of interest rate of the most credible currencies without having yet built up a very long track record. I would like to underline that in Europe, we are not converging towards a kind of average of the market interest rates of the potential euro area. One has to understand that the philosophy of EMU is to organize the convergence of the European countries towards the best possible level of monetary credibility and therefore towards the benchmarks in terms of interest rates. As Mr. Trichet recently stated, “convergence is a benchmarking concept”, not an averaging process. Convergence does not mean that the “core” currencies’ interest rates should go up towards irrelevant “average levels”, but that the interest rates of more “peripheral” countries should progressively converge towards the benchmark level. This benchmark level is currently given by the intervention rates of the Bundesbank and of the Banque de France, both at 3.3%. But of course the benchmark level one year from now could be different from 3.3%. 2. OPERATIONAL ISSUES How will the ESCB operate? As you know, central banks implement their policies through the creation and destruction of central bank reserves, of which they are monopoly BIS Review 112/1997  -5-  suppliers.
So far, more than 3600 people have completed the modules and a substantial number of them, one in five, have decided not to proceed with the purchase. This points to two things. Firstly, the module is successful in nudging participants to reassess their existing financial obligations before they can take on more than what they can handle. Secondly, it reinforces the need to continue pushing for financial education. Individuals need to know their capacity, and what they can afford before undertaking a commitment of this magnitude. We have established that every individual needs to play their part to ensure that they are fully aware of and are able to undertake the commitment of buying a house. However, the responsibility does not reside with the buyers alone. Industry players in the private sector also 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  have a role to play to support the national agenda of affordable homes. As one of the core players in the housing market, developers have a significant role to play. In providing the supply of homes for the public, developers should seek to provide homes at an affordable price point. Using international affordability metrics, houses in Malaysia are considered to be “seriously unaffordable” with a median multiple of five times. This, in turn, affects home ownership. Take the latest data of unsold residential properties of about 171,000 units. About 74% of them are priced beyond what ordinary Malaysians can afford.

Promising early years From the onset big techs were "data rich" and benefited from a global customer base and strong brand recognition. In order to keep their lead in innovation, big techs acquired a large number of start-ups and fin techs. In the end, their huge financial means enabled them to set up, and then consolidate, powerful oligopolies. In the wake of US GAFAMs, Chinese BATX emerged to serve their domestic market, and expanded into Asia. All big techs started diversifying their activities, among others in the financial sector where they first launched innovative digital means of payments, for instance Google Pay in 2011 and Apple Pay in 2014. This chapter of the book is crystal-clear: big techs were highly successful in this area. Digital / mobile wallet payments represent around 27% of e-commerce payments in Europe, 36% in India and 69% in Asiai. Not only do payments feed into their "DNAii loop", but big techs helped turn payments into a glittering business, with e-commerce and social media offering opportunities for innovations to prosper. The value of cashless payments consequently increased by 15% in 2021 in both advanced and emerging economiesiii, even more quickly than the trend of the last decade, and this acceleration is expected to continue in the next few years, notably for walletsiv. 1/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Big techs were then considered major competitors of banks and financial institutions – and sometimes even central banks.