samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
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.

Cross-border Payments – Innovating in a Changing World Speech given by Victoria Cleland, Executive Director, Banking, Payments and Innovation  Central Bank Payments Conference 13 October 2020  I would like to thank Michael Pywell, Michaela Costello, Laurie Roberts and Cameron Brooks for their assistance in preparing this speech. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  Introduction  I was delighted to be invited to speak at this event, during such an exciting time in central banking and the payments industry. I am sorry that we are unable to all meet face to face, not least as it was originally hoped for this conference to take place in Athens. I cannot offer you the Greek sunshine, but I would like to introduce some Greek philosophy to get us started. Plato taught us that ‘Necessity is the Mother of Invention’ - this year’s virtual conference is a great example of that. So thank you to Jean-Michel and the team for their flexibility and ingenuity in holding this conference during such challenging times. And necessity and invention are at the heart of payments too. Every one of us needs to make payments. While the medium of exchange might have undergone considerable invention and innovation since Plato’s day, the importance of being able to exchange money safely and efficiently has not.
How quickly that happens depends on the strength and durability of the recovery. Some of the turnaround in growth here and elsewhere is mechanical in nature, driven by a reduction in the rate at which businesses are running down their inventories. But as far as the strength of the recovery over the medium term goes, one needs to look at the underlying forces driving the demand for UK goods and services. On this score, there are both reasons to be fearful and reasons to be cheerful. The reasons to be fearful are several. First, the banking system here and elsewhere is still dealing with the legacy of decisions taken before the crisis. The process of balance sheet repair has some way to run and that is likely to continue to restrain the supply of credit. Moreover, a key feature of the run-in to the crisis was an underestimation of risk and an excessive compression of risk premia. We should not expect premia to return to where they were before the crisis broke. The spreads on lending to businesses and households, particularly riskier prospects, will be higher in the future than before the crisis. BIS Review 31/2010  1  Second, the housing boom has resulted in some households, especially younger ones, carrying forward high levels of debt.

As the industry navigates these issues, a shared commitment to a common set of values has never been more critical to build trust – with customers, with employees, with other financial institutions, and with the public at large. There are compelling economic, not just social or moral, reasons to do so. It encourages healthy competition, more efficient and sustainable markets, and consistently high levels of performance over the long term. The FSPB, however, cannot achieve this alone. Deliberate and sustained efforts by the industry will be needed to engage, to communicate, to educate and to internalise these shared values. By pooling inputs across the industry, richer worked examples can be developed to shed light on how ethical principles should apply in practice. The consequences of misconduct should also be clear and unambiguous to firmly entrench behavioural norms – both within individual financial institutions and at an industry level. As you are aware, moves in this direction are already being taken with the requirement financial institutions to capture and share information on employee misconduct to inform hiring decisions beginning from July this year. The Bank on its part will continue to provide a credible deterrent against misconduct through enforcement actions. With the enactment of the Financial Services Act 2013, the Bank has not hesitated to use wider enforcement powers that include stiff administrative penalties provided under the Financial Services Act to bring institutions to book for serious conduct breaches, and barring individuals from holding senior roles in financial institutions.
Banks in Hong Kong made great strides in BCP during the preparations for the onslaught of the Y2K bug. Although the onslaught never came, we were soon reminded of the importance of BCP by the 9-11 attack, which alerted us to the need for robustness in payment, clearing and settlement systems, among other things. Then the outbreak of SARS last year put the BCP capability of banks in Hong Kong to a real test. I am pleased to say that the contingency arrangements of banks - whether of a technical or personnel nature - performed very well during that difficult time. Nevertheless, the recurrence of disasters and their unpredictable nature should always be a feature of BCP and its continuous review. Indeed, the probability of occurrence of these events seems to have increased, along with heightened geo-political tension and the trend of globalisation, not just of trade and markets but also of terrorism and disease. BIS Review 37/2004  3  A further area that falls broadly under technology risk comes from outsourcing. Continuing pressure on profitability will no doubt result in more banks seeking to outsource their operations to lower-cost centres outside of Hong Kong. This will in turn give rise to additional operational risks for banks, including the risks of service outage and leakage of confidential customer data.

Some research has shown that in Latin America public banks are less procyclical than private banks (Micco and Panizza, 2006), but this could be for good or bad reasons. If public banks are prudent and avoid jumping on the bandwagon of optimism during the upturn this is good – they may even soften credit constraints during the downturn. However, public banks may also be an instrument to pay back supporters of politicians, and certainly this is unfair and inefficient. Public banks may also be subject to capture by the electoral cycle (Micco et al., 2007), or used as an instrument to implement industrial policy. Given the lack of other instruments, providing credit for selected economic activities may be a way to promote specific sectors. There are certainly better tools for promoting specific sectors, especially from efficiency, fiscal, transparency and accountability points of view. An issue that has been on the agenda in most countries is financial consumer protection. This is, of course, a welcome development, and is a clear demand from society. Transparency in financial charges and the nature of the contracts, the ability to change across financial agents, assigning clear responsibilities in this area to regulators, and improving financial literacy are among the issues being discussed. It is important, however, for consumer protection to form an integral part of the regulatory infrastructure in order to avoid inconsistencies among agencies and risks to depositors and overall financial stability in the name of protecting consumers.
The economy is now undergoing a slow recovery, driven by the normal cyclical course of events but subdued by balance sheet adjustments and geopolitical uncertainty. Balance sheet adjustments will continue, however, as there are still substantial savings imbalances between different regions of the world. At the same time, the risk of war has caused flight to safer assets and thereby resulted in low interest rates. Recently, there has been an improvement in earnings and a slight fall in credit spreads. Nevertheless, the effects of asset price adjustments on pension funds, life insurance companies and non-financial enterprises are still been felt through various parts of the economy. Should the economy follow a debt cycle in the future, there is also a risk that the currently low interest rates will lead to the implementation of projects that would be unprofitable at normal rate levels. How has housing finance in Sweden been affected in recent years by internationalisation, regulatory changes and balance sheet adjustments? Developments in the Swedish asset and debt markets have largely been the same as those abroad. Shares and commercial property have declined in value since 2000. Investment in residential property and prices of permanent single-family dwellings have risen by 8 and 15 per cent respectively for the past two years. Prices of tenant-owner apartments have also increased.

Public occupational pension schemes seem to enjoy slightly stronger constitutional protection than national insurance pensions, but the Supreme Court has  14  ROBEK – register of all municipal and county authorities subject to approval pursuant to Section 60 of the Local Government Act. 15  See discussion in Appendix 5 to the Report of the Pension Commission (NOU 2004:1). 8  BIS Review 123/2010  repeatedly stressed the authorities’ need for freedom of action when it comes to making changes to pension schemes. The Norwegian national insurance scheme is a pay-as-you-go system. This means that a given year’s pension payments from the scheme are covered by government budget revenues that year. When the national insurance scheme was introduced in 1967, a fund was established to provide for an expected reduction in private saving. However, pensions were still included in the central government budget at an early stage and financed by current tax revenues. Transfers to the National Insurance Fund were soon discontinued. Nevertheless, confidence in the pension system has actually remained intact, reflected in a low level of household saving, primarily through home investment. Perhaps there is some element of miscalculation here. A fall in value may occur if many homeowners free up housing capital to cushion old age. (See Chart: Government Pension Fund Global.) It was only when transfers to the Petroleum Fund were introduced in 1996 that funds were accumulated that could also be used to cover future pension payments.
Even the rescue operations undertaken in the US in order to protect systemic stability have been accompanied by some form of penalty for the managers as well as the shareholders who had not paid enough attention to their behaviour. It is also important to minimise regulatory changes that could induce investors to cover up their losses, especially during an adjustment of market prices, as this could weigh on transparency and market confidence. It is surely desirable to support long-term as opposed to speculative investment, and protect long-term investment from the perverse effects of market volatility, but this should be accompanied by supervisory measures that would certify that the investment in question is really a long-term one and is not subject to liquidity risks. 2  See, for example, D. Irwin (1998): “The Smoot-Hawley Tariff: A Quantitative Assessment”, Review of Economics and Statistics, 80, 2, pp. 326-334. 4  BIS Review 61/2008  Let me now turn to the things that should be done. Also in this case I would like to highlight four of them. Three of them involve actions at European level, as either the competence has been transferred to that level or the international partners are of such large size that it would be futile for individual European countries to address them separately. A first important step has already been taken: it is the euro.

Fifth, we cannot overlook the potential role of international diversification, as shown by the part it has played in some of the largest Spanish banks in the last decade. Thus, over that period, the Spanish banking sector has increased its international exposure by 45%, while banks in countries such as Germany, France and Italy have reduced their international exposure by 38%, 16% and 15%, respectively. Despite the risks associated with business in emerging market economies, international diversification of banking business, especially when focused on retail business and organised in a decentralised manner, brings important benefits, in terms of greater diversity of business models and revenue sources, as was seen during the last crisis. In addition,  18/29  there is evidence that the lower the level of synchrony between the economic and financial cycles of the countries in which banks operate, the greater these benefits.5 In this respect a profound reflection at the European and the international level on the regulatory treatment of diversification in the banking business may be appropriate, so that, in conjunction with the greater complexity it may entail, some of its beneficial effects on banks’ risk profiles may be afforded better recognition. Sixth, nor should we overlook the importance of operational risk being correctly managed by banks. Operational risk accounts for 9.3% of the risk-weighted assets of Spanish deposit institutions by volume, slightly below the European average (10.5%). In any event, we know on past experience that the deterioration in solvency associated with an operational risk event can be high.
The debt burden thereby increased when the economy declined. During the three banking crises, many banks had an aggressive lending policy. Bank lending (in constant prices) increased sharply prior to the crises and decreased markedly afterwards. Deflation in the 1920s led to a real increase in lending and debt. Favourable financing terms for banks underpinned expansion during all three periods. In the second half of the 1890s and during the First World War, commercial banks expanded sharply by issuing new equity. Savings banks were not as expansive. One reason for this may be that savings banks were subject to a certain degree of supervision and regulation. There was little regulation of commercial banks until the interwar years. In all three crises, the banks that were most expansive were also the most severely affected in the subsequent crises. In the 1980s, strong lending growth was primarily made possible by foreign funding. When foreign funding dried up, when confidence in the Norwegian economy deteriorated, bank borrowing from Norges Bank increased sharply. In addition, collateral was not required – as it is now – as security for loans from Norges Bank. During the banking crisis that followed, the division of responsibility between the government authorities and Norges Bank was clarified. If solvency support proves to be necessary, the guarantee funds, and as a last resort the government, shall provide such support.

Ajith Nivard Cabraal: Sri Lanka and its battle against money laundering and terrorist financing activities Keynote address by Mr Ajith Nivard Cabraal, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, at the Commonwealth Secretariat Programme on Financial Investigations Training, Colombo, 22-26 January 2007. *  *  *  Your Excellencies, Ladies & Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure that I welcome you to the inaugural ceremony of this conference and extend to all overseas participants and representatives a very warm welcome to our country. I am also very happy to be able to share a few thoughts with you at this Forum about the progress Sri Lanka has made in its battle against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing activities. Sri Lanka has given serious recognition to the need for preventing money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism in view of their adverse consequences both economic and social. In fact, Sri Lanka has been a victim of terrorist financing and suffered immensely by its consequences. As we all know, money laundering and financing of terrorism promote criminal activities, endanger financial system stability and misallocate resources into non-productive investments. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has a special concern about these adverse consequences, as it has a mandate to maintain financial system stability together with economic and price stability.
If the build up in credit risk is underestimated, foreign banks will tend to set overambitious ROE targets. When the extent of underestimation is recognized, banks have to increase their provisioning rate in line with their upward reassessment of credit risk, reducing ROE projections. This could lead management of large foreign bank groups to conclude that their ambitious ROE targets cannot be met and curtail lending growth in response. The entrance of big international foreign groups puts upward pressure on the entire banking system attempt to compete for borrowers. However, there is a risk that credit growth is associated with lower lending standards, enhanced by the lack of financial information available on potential borrowers that continues to be a problem in the region. As the FSAP for Albania indicates, in the area of corporate lending, firms balance sheets and income statements may be altered to avoid taxes, while information about remittance income for individuals is imprecise and unverifiable. The rising real estate prices in the region have also encouraged lending, using the real estate as collateral to a great extent. As real estate prices continue to rise, this could lead to an over-extension of credit, and if the real estate market becomes more speculative and more leveraged through bank loans, a decline in demand can cause a fall in real estate prices, causing both collateral to fall in value, and the ability of borrowers to pay to decline.

For most of this period, we have integrated in our policy important monetary policy elements that define essential characteristics of the inflation targeting regime. Various internationally recognized experts of monetary policy have compared the current setup of monetary policy to a fully fledged inflation targeting framework. During these recent years Bank of Albania has publicly announced a numeric objective of 3 percent with a tolerance zone of plus minus 1 percent for inflation in the 12 coming months. In addition, weekly repurchase argument rate, the key policy rate, has become the most  BIS Review 119/2007  3  important instrument of monetary policy and signaling tool. Yet, we are still in the process of empirical investigation and quantification of the monetary transition channels, with particular focus on the efficiency of the inter-bank markets. Modestly but surely I have to admit that the efficiency of our monetary policy has increased. In general we are satisfied with the reaction of the interest rate behavior, which model the developments of the bank of Albania key rate with the appropriate lag structure. Moreover increased and more efficient communication with the public are reflected in contained inflation expectations which are anchored to Bank of Albania announced numeric objective. We are happy to observe that results of consumer and business confidence as well as financial market expectations surveys indicate these trends. It is widely accepted that such results are outcome of our continuous attention toward ever lasting improvement of institutional and regulatory framework on which Bank of Albania operates.
This will aim to ensure continuity with the aforementioned framework, as well as compatibility with the IAS, permitting a far-reaching and consistent reform of the current model. Accordingly, the new circular will assist institutions in complying with the IAS; it will select the most prudent options when the international standards propose more than one, so recognising the particularities of financial institutions; and, finally, by permitting a common accounting framework, it will prevent the choice of accounting options from being a factor that may distort competition. Allow me to end this review of the challenges facing financial institutions by pointing out that their responses must be supplemented by market discipline and by the action of financial-services consumers. In effect, market discipline is an essential supplement for supervisors; market participants, by rewarding those institutions that act appropriately, generate the necessary incentives for managers to behave prudently. Yet, for market discipline to be possible, market participants need to have the necessary information. This is why the promotion of transparency is of paramount importance, to ensure that institutions report information that is reliable and based on generally accepted valuation principles in a timely and opportune fashion. This qualitative and quantitative information must enable the results obtained by institutions, the risks they are assuming and the practices employed in their management and control to be assessed. Finally, in a non-zero-risk world, the action of consumers of financial products and servces is, as I have already mentioned, very important.

That said, there are some uncertainties in the current situation, namely geopolitical instability, the rise in oil prices and the global macroeconomic imbalances which, naturally, affect the outlook for the euro area economy. Despite such uncertainties, the European economy should post notably higher growth this year than last, on the basis of expanding export markets and a gradual recovery in internal demand. At the same time, the momentous step taken in European construction with EU enlargement should be an additional incentive for seeing through the economic and institutional reforms needed to revitalise European growth. BIS Review 39/2004  3  The Spanish economy Addressing the behaviour of the Spanish economy in 2003 and in 2004 to data, I should begin by pointing out that our economy has, once again, managed to improve on the trajectory followed by the euro area. Internal demand in particular has continued to respond to the expansionary impulses provided by monetary conditions that have remained very generous for Spain’s domestic situation. The more disciplined application of other economic policies and a more flexible reaction on the supply side of the economy, in line with the structural reforms undertaken, have helped maintain a setting favourable to the progressive strengthening of activity. This confrms that the slowdown which touched bottom in May 2002 has been put behind. The growth differential with the euro area widened to almost two percentage points and held at around this level in 2004 Q1.