samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Hamad Al-Sayari: Recent economic and financial developments in Saudi Arabia Speech by His Excellency Hamad Al-Sayari, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques on the occasion of presenting the 44th Annual Report of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, Riyadh, 11 October 2008. *  *  *  It is a great pleasure for me to present to you the 44th Annual Report of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency which reviews the latest economic and financial developments in the Kingdom. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, During 2007, the national economy continued its strong growth for the fifth consecutive year, with real GDP increasing by 3.4 percent. The roles of the private and the government sectors in the development process were enhanced, recording growth rates of 5.8 percent and 2.7 percent respectively. The State budget witnessed remarkable improvement in 2007, resulting in a surplus for the fifth consecutive year amounting to 12.3 percent of GDP. The balance of payments registered a surplus for the ninth consecutive year which stood at 24.9 percent of GDP. The monetary and banking sector also contributed effectively to the economy by providing adequate liquidity to finance growing and accelerated activities. Financial institutions played a significant role in the growth of the economy by providing various modern financial services. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, With the establishment of the Supreme Economic Council (SEC) under your wise leadership, the Saudi economy has witnessed a dramatic transformation.

The Council has taken a broad range of decisions and measures aimed at restructuring and regulating the economy and streamlining regulations and legislation which would help to upgrade the level of efficiency and competitiveness of the economy and support optimum operation of production factors. The objective has been to provide an advanced regulatory and administrative framework and an environment attractive to domestic and foreign investments. Since the establishment of the Council, more than 60 major restructuring reform decisions have been taken in addition to more than 130 decisions for regulatory, procedural and administrative development. Fortunately, these developments have been accompanied by remarkable improvement in the State budget and in the world oil markets. Consequently, economic performance has obviously improved in recent years. An indicator of this improvement is the private sector’s average annual real growth rate of 5.0 percent and the rise in other non-oil exports by an average annual rate of 23.1 percent to 7.3 percent of GDP at the end of 2007. As a result of these reforms, the Kingdom has gained a high sovereign rating for its financial solvency and also won the United Nations Public Service Award for the year 2008 for developing SADAD (Bill Presentment and Payment System). Moreover, the Kingdom ranked sixteenth among 181 countries worldwide in terms of competition in business and investment performance environment according to Doing Business 2009 Report published recently by IFC and the World Bank.
Meanwhile, banks, which are the focus of our federal regulatory efforts for holding and transferring money, have largely not engaged in holding, transferring, or <gasp> issuing digital currencies, and federal banking regulators in the United States have remained largely silent on the permissibility of these activities.27 The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) sought to carve out a special-purpose charter—its so-called “fintech charter”—presumably to bring some of these activities under the OCC’s regulatory umbrella, but it has since been mired in litigation over issuing these special-purpose charters with states in the U.S. that wish to license these activities under local law.28 Separately, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, which has authority to write rules governing certain consumer accounts and payment products, determined it would further analyze digital currencies and did not try to bring them into its purview in a recent amendment to its Regulation E.29 To be sure, states within the U.S. have begun to adopt laws and regulations for digital currency businesses. New York and Wyoming, to cite two examples, have adopted digital currency-specific regimes. There is, however, little coordination in the approach at the state level,30 which highlights that a state-by-state approach risks both inconsistent treatment and the possibility of a “race to the bottom” on licensing standards that could be reminiscent of the wildcat era. The challenges states will face in crafting sensible rules are only amplified with respect to digital currencies, which tend to operate without borders.

We will continue to set a high bar on professional integrity and quality of advice, and we welcome your ideas and input on how we can continue to encourage firms to grow within the industry and bring financial advisory services to a wider spectrum of the public. The Association of Financial Advisers has a very important role in this process and has been a focal point for the Bank’s engagements with the industry. I look forward to your continued cooperation in achieving our shared goal of developing a financial advisory industry in Malaysia that truly serves to improve the well-being of financial consumers in this more challenging environment, and one that we can all be proud of. Thank you very much for your attention. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches
11th International Insurance Conference Paris, 25 October 2019 “Insuring in the long term in a short-term world”  Speech by François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Banque de France Chairman of the ACPR  Press contact: Mark Deen (mark.deen@banque-france.fr). Page 1 of 6  Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen I am delighted to participate in this 11th International Insurance Conference. This will be my fourth time at this unmissable annual event, but the first for you, Florence. Bernard Delas and I would like to offer you our warmest wishes for success at the head of the Fédération française de l’assurance (FFA – French insurance federation). For our part, changes are also underway and I would like to take the opportunity this evening to welcome the appointment of Dominique Laboureix as Secretary General of the ACPR, with First Deputy Secretary General, Patrick Montagner, whom you know well, at his side. The subject of your 11th Conference – “Insuring in the long term in a shortterm world” – perfectly sums up the real challenge to the insurance profession. I would like to begin by thanking France’s 712 authorised insurers that never waver in playing their key role in the financing of our economy, with EUR 2,600 billion of investments. In 2018, France became the leading European insurance market, outpacing the United Kingdom and Germany in terms of total balance sheet value and non-life premiums earned.

We are entering a consultation period that is absolutely critical and that will lead in June next year to the issuance of an opinion by EIOPA. This opinion, which will be reviewed by the Commission, will form the basis for the negotiations with the Council and Parliament that are scheduled to start in early 2021. Here again, we need to put the challenges posed by Solvency II into perspective. Let me remind you that this is the most ambitious reform ever undertaken in insurance. The new regulatory framework, based on an  Page 5 of 6  approach that takes into account all risks to which insurers are exposed, has undeniably strengthened the resilience of the European insurance market. However, and you yourselves see this every day, the prudential requirements imposed by Solvency II have a number of drawbacks, including being volatile and complex. To remedy this, let’s take advantage of the window of opportunity offered by the directive’s review, and push for four priorities that are essential for financial stability and for the sound financing of the economy: (i)  All things being equal, the revision must not lead to an increase in capital requirements for the European insurance industry. (ii)  It would be counterproductive to artificially lower the capital requirement by stopping equity investments. But despite the advances obtained in 2018, this asset class is still being penalised.
Sustaining recent progress is a key priority for the Bank of England as I know it is for the SPE. People often ask me what my professional responsibilities in the Bank are. The most formal description is contained in the Bank’s Senior Managers and Certification Regime return. The SM&CR is a critical element of the post-crisis regime for accountability in the whole financial sector, ensuring there is a clear public line of sight running from the senior leadership through to every key function carried out by a financial institution. 2  The SM&CR is an essential part of the soft infrastructure underpinning improved conduct and therefore fairer and more effective financial markets in the UK and globally. 3  The SM&CR entry for me is long, and so I will just flag a few of my key responsibilities. What these boil down to is that among the Governors I have operational responsibility for the Bank of England’s balance sheet. It is the Bank’s balance sheet that is going to be the focus of my talk today. The balance sheet is integral to the operations undertaken in the areas I oversee, Markets and Banking, Payments and Financial Resilience. And it is central to the Bank’s mission for monetary and financial stability: the balance sheet is the hard infrastructure that supports much of the Bank’s policy activity. For most of the time it may not be as newsworthy as some of the tools it supports, like Bank Rate, QE or “lender of last resort”.

Strategic priorities to further develop the financial advisory industry The Bank has identified a number of strategic priorities to further develop the full potential of the financial advisory industry in delivering better outcomes to consumers and increasing the level of insurance penetration in Malaysia. I should say that we benefitted significantly from our engagements with the industry on the direction that we intend to take and the key issues that need to be addressed moving forward. Today, let me mention four key priorities. Our first priority is to ensure that financial advisers are highly competent and professional when they provide advice. We understand from our engagements with AFA that recruiting the right talent continues to be a major challenge given that financial advisory firms are competing with larger financial institutions for a limited pool of qualified individuals. The Bank will continue to work in close collaboration with AFA to increase the talent pool. This includes reviewing on a regular basis, the programmes and qualifications that meet the minimum standards for financial advisors and working with academia, training providers and accreditation bodies to broaden the qualifications recognized without compromising on quality. There is also a need to lift the competency requirements for financial advisers. The current emphasis has been largely on ensuring that financial advisers have sound product knowledge and the core competencies to understand and analyse their client’s needs.
Part of this discussion has been marked by a desire or hope for a return to the situation before the financial crisis. But another part focuses on the insight that we may  9 The Riksbank does not normally buy this type of asset, but as early as the 1897 Sveriges Riksbank Act it was  proposed that the bank have the power of authority to buy any Swedish bonds at all, in addition to certain foreign government securities. This power of authority has since passed from the 1897 act via the 1934 act to the one from 1988 that currently applies. Along the road, this power of authority has undergone some changes in wording but the essence of it still remains. The Riksbank has the right, for monetary policy purposes, to buy, sell and mediate securities (including corporate bonds), foreign currency and the rights and obligations linked to these assets. 11 [25]  have to change how we work in the longer term too. The current situation strengthens this already great need. Below, there follow a number of the proposals raised. Some of them are intended to institutionalise the usage we have already come across in my description of the crisis measures. One key theme of the discussion is the need to have tools able to counteract future recessions in a credible manner. It is also important to be systematic and to describe clearly the conditions under which these tools may be used.

We now have a web portal that offers such opportunities, identical to the statistical portals of many European Union countries. The presentation within the today’s workshop is the first since its launching. The National Bank’s Plan of Activities we adopted yesterday also includes a project to further improve the availability and understanding of our press releases, information, data. In one of the first phases of the project, we plan to conduct surveys in order to obtain opinion from you, the journalists, as well as from other users of our information and data. But even before we embark on such a project activity, we would greatly value your suggestions and ideas, which will surely be an important road map for us to develop our communication with the public. According to recent releases, we are one of the most transparent central banks in the region and actually very close to the average index of Eastern European countries and the ECB.1 Of course, there is room for further improvement to approach more advanced economies, or the euro area as a whole. I believe that you, with your ratings and comments, will help us achieving this goal. A good opportunity for this will be the open discussion that is foreseen in the closing part of today’s event. In the end, for modern central banks, the rule “it would be good to have” no longer applies, but the rule “it must have” good, open communication with the public.
Inflation developments in Malaysia this year reflect the pass-through of some of these costs, as well as the strengthening of domestic demand. Consequently, although headline inflation is still projected to remain low and stable and range within 2.2% to 3.2% in 2022, core inflation increased to an average of 2.2% in the first six months of 2022 compared to 0.7% in 2021. With the economy now on a firmer growth trajectory and no longer in a state of crisis, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) through the MPC in May and July this year judged that it was the right time to begin withdrawing the excess monetary support, raising the OPR from its historical low of 1.75%. What’s important is that by acting pre-emptively, we will be in a position to undertake adjustments to the monetary policy settings in Malaysia in a measured and gradual way to avoid hindering economic recovery. Importantly, this is also to restore conditions that will support sustainable growth over the medium and longer term. To this end, the timing, pace, and extent of rate increases will be guided by assessments of how the evolving economic and financial conditions domestically and globally would affect our inflation and growth outlook. Let me emphasise that monetary policy in Malaysia continues to be accommodative to support a sustainable economic growth in an environment of price stability.

More generally, economic distortions and loss of revenue caused by financial crimes can also threaten our growth prospects. While there are many issues that I could speak about on financial crimes today, I would like to focus on what has been at the top of many minds – cybercrimes. Indeed, cybercrimes are a global menace. McAfee reported that cybercrime cost the global economy more than 1 trillion dollars in 2020, or more than 1% of global GDP. Malaysia is not spared from this growing threat. As indicated in the National Risk Assessment 2020, fraud – which includes cybercrimes – is among the country’s top high-risk crimes, with a higher number of cases and losses suffered compared to the previous assessment conducted in 2017. More than 20,000 cybercrimes were reported in 2021 alone, involving losses of RM560 million. Between 2017 to July 2021, Malaysians suffered losses of about RM2.23 billion on account of cybercrimes. As more people switch to mobile phones for online transactions, we are also seeing an increase in online banking fraud incidents involving mobile malware. Although fraud losses remain low as a share of the total value of online banking transactions, they point to ever present and evolving threats as society adapts to new norms of living and doing business. Indeed, criminals are exploiting the rapid dispersion of technology in this recent period. This is not a trend that will reverse. Therefore, strengthening the financial system’s defence against emerging threats and vulnerabilities must remain a top priority.
Their latest metamorphosis needs to ensure they reach the parts of society they previously have not reached, using media they have not previously used, conversing as much as convincing, listening as often as talking. It is an irony, and not one lost on me, that this speech is a classic example of one-way central bank communications. Worse still, it comes in at around 11,500 words, contains 2,000 adverbs and adjectives and has a reading grade score of around 11. Perhaps central bankers, like this one, have always been better at preaching than practicing. If so, that needs to change. And when better to change than now. This would be a brave new world for central banks. They do not need to be as magical as Mandelbrot’s shaman, as good a storyteller as Charles Dickens, as great a showman as Elvis. But to make a success of this new world, central banks will need to be brave. 82  Roy et al (2012).

Embracing the views and expertise of citizens is increasingly common in other disciplines. “Citizen Science” draws on the time and expertise of the general public to solve problems as diverse as spotting star and galaxy formations and forecasting the weather. 82  As well as helping solve these problems, Citizen Science  increases public interest and understanding of science. What better time for central banks to begin enlisting the help of some Citizen Economists. Conclusion  Central bank communications have come a long way. When pressed by a Parliamentary Committee in 1930 to explain the Bank’s actions, Montagu Norman replied: “Reasons, Mr Chairman? I don’t have reasons, I have instincts”. The Bank’s Chief Economist of the day was given similarly short shrift by Norman: “You are not here to tell us what to do” he scolded “but to explain why we have done it.” How things change. Central banks are public institutions, put on earth to serve the public. As the public’s norms, preferences and demands shift, so too must central bank practices. That is exactly what has happened over many years. The evolution-cum-revolution in central bank communications practices over recent years came in response to new circumstances and new responsibilities. It has delivered significant benefits. But the past few years have seen further societal and technological shifts, at a time when central banks having been bearing a heavier policy load than ever previously. As trust and technology has changed, so too must central banks.
Banks’ average risk weight (risk-weighted assets per unit of assets) has almost halved, falling from over 70% in 1993 to below 40% at end 2011 (see, also, Blundell-Wignall and Atkinson (2011)). There are three possible interpretations of this trend. One is that banks’ assets, in aggregate, are around half as risky today as they were 20 years ago. A second is that banks are twice as good at managing these risks as they were 20 years ago. In the light of the crisis, which unearthed huge risks on banks’ balance sheets accumulated over this period, neither proposition rings especially true. To see why, consider the evolution of an alternative measure of risk – simple bank leverage. In the pre-crisis boom, bank leverage rose steadily to reach historically unprecedented levels. This signalled high and rising bank risk (Chart 2). Indeed, bank leverage and bank risk weights moved in opposite directions over this period, with a correlation coefficient of minus 0.6. While the risk traffic lights were flashing bright red for leverage, for risk weights they were signalling ever-deeper green. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The subsequent financial crisis has made clear which traffic light signal was at fault.1 The boom was leverage-fuelled and so too has been the subsequent bust. At least at an aggregate level, bank risk weights appear to have borne, at best, a tenuous relationship with risk. At worst, they were a contrarian indicator.

While the global economy is adjusting toward a new equilibrium, solid macro-prudential long run policies should replace current stimulating efforts. Therefore the challenge for our economies in the long run is to address current problems and the inherited ones based on a new model of growth, based on: (i) higher savings and investments, aiming toward a contained consumption matched by domestic production; (ii) persistent FDI inflows oriented toward tradable sectors; (iii) regional cooperation. BIS Review 164/2009  1  Let me briefly share with you some of my thoughts on the importance of this last remark, namely regional cooperation. Following arguments illustrate the benefits of cooperation, at several levels: •  From a development point of view, increased cooperation and integration on a regional level creates a greater scope for economies of scale. This would increase incentives for local and foreign investors to undertake big investment project that would not be profitable otherwise. A related advantage would be increased specialization of our economies, leading to a higher economic performance. •  On a policy level, coordinated macroeconomic policies, legal and prudential frameworks, would tend to improve the allocation of resources and to prevent beggar-thy-neighbor policies. This race to the bottom type of philosophy would not benefit the region as a whole. •  From a strategic point of view, our region is in competition with several emerging regions on a global scale.