Affordability risks of new mortgages financing residential investment property are high and have risen further. These developments have taken place against a background of persistent imbalances in the mortgage and real estate markets. Both mortgage-lending volume and prices for single-family houses and apartments continued to rise at a moderate rate in 2019. Although prices of residential investment property have stagnated of late, there is still a risk of a price correction in this segment in particular. On the one hand, this is due to the sharp price increases in previous years. On the other, larger numbers of vacant dwellings suggest that brisk construction activity in rental apartments may have led to an oversupply. Despite banks’ high risk appetite and the persistent imbalances in the markets, SNB stress tests suggest that the resilience of the domestically focused banks remains adequate overall. Thanks to robust capitalisation, most of these banks would be able to absorb the losses incurred in adverse scenarios. Given the risks I just mentioned, this is positive. It is crucial for the stability of the financial system that banks continue to hold sufficient capital to be able to cover the risks on their books. Ongoing pressure on margins means that the incentive for domestically focused banks to take on risks remains high. This applies to mortgage lending in particular. The revised selfregulation rules for banks in the residential investment property segment, which come into force at the beginning of 2020, should help to prevent a further build-up of risks in this segment.

The SNB will closely monitor the effectiveness of the revised self-regulation. In  1  Federal Council (2019): Bericht des Bundesrates zu den systemrelevanten Banken. www.admin.ch/opc/de/federal-gazette/2019/5385.pdf  Page 2/4  Berne, 12 December 2019 Fritz Zurbrügg  News conference  parallel, it will continue to regularly reassess the need for an adjustment of the countercyclical capital buffer. Climate change and financial stability  Let me now turn to climate change, a subject already addressed by my colleague Thomas Jordan. Climate change can pose longer-term risks to financial stability. There are primarily two ways in which climate risks can affect the financial system. One is through the increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters with all their consequences, and the other is through changes to climate policy and to the corresponding regulations. It is the responsibility of individual financial system participants to fully understand climate risks relevant to them and to correctly assess the potential consequences from a business perspective – just as with other risks. For its part, the SNB is focusing on how climate risks could impact on the stability of the Swiss banking system as a whole, as well as on systemically important financial market infrastructures. Currently, the SNB considers the likelihood of risks linked to climate change threatening the stability of the banking system as a whole to be low. In the case of financial market infrastructures, climate risks are minimised, for example, by stipulating that technical facilities be distributed over different locations.