samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Fintechs, leading players in the digital revolution The digital revolution has ushered in a new wave of players, activities and services that first swept into the payments sector, and then spread gradually to all financial services. Some of you, the Fintechs, are living proof of this: more than half of all payment and electronic money institutions received their licence between 2018 and 2021, in other words since European regulations relaxed the conditions for market entry.i Fintechs are here to stay: to give just one example, according to an ACPR study published in July,ii online banks and other 100% digital payment players doubled their customer base between 2018 and 2020, and in 2020 alone captured 35% of new retail current accounts. The rise in interest rates should help them on the crucial path towards profitability – which  Page 2 of 5 is necessary for everybody, even though situations vary widely, depending on the business model. The digital revolution is leading to a major restructuring of the financial landscape, at the point where these new players and the existing ecosystem meet. According to an ACPR survey published in January,iii all banks and insurers questioned said they had set up partnerships with innovative players. Legacy banks and insurers are thus being forced to operate with a more open structure, exploring new distribution channels and offering new products. I welcome this wholeheartedly: no Maginot Lines and no trench warfare.

We are also looking very seriously into the possibility of a wholesale central bank digital currency: it would play a key role as the safest settlement asset, and would thus continue to anchor the monetary and financial system, even as the latter becomes partially tokenised. This is why the Banque de France is going to add, alongside some of you, three more experiments to the nine already carried out; it is also with this in mind that the Bank organised a pioneering international conference on 27 September on the tokenisation of finance. On a regulatory level, France was one of the first to propose a new DASP status under its 2019 PACTE Law, which has since been attributed to 54 players. Europe has provided a pioneering regulatory framework for crypto-assets thanks to the MiCA regulation; following the agreement obtained under the French presidency, it is crucial that it be adopted, and as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we will remain extremely vigilant regarding the risk of regulatory arbitrage in Europe. On a global level, it is imperative that the other large jurisdictions – including the largest one – now implement the shared recommendations of the G20 and FSB on consumer protection, financial stability and the prevention of money laundering. We all confirmed our agreement last week in Washington: this is good news for “trusted innovation”, but we need to turn our words into action on everything, and quickly, following the examples of France and Europe.
24 In this context, the combination of our interest rate and credit easing policy, together with the recently completed Comprehensive Assessment of bank balance sheets, can be seen as creating the ideal conditions for reforms to succeed. By bringing real interest rates well below the medium-term growth rate, this policy package is creating strong price incentives to invest. And by improving the transmission of those low real rates into actual borrowing conditions, it ensures that the financial sector can quickly reallocate finance to firms that capitalise on those incentives. In this way, accommodative monetary policy supports structural reform by ensuring that the investment and employment benefits materialise faster. And structural reform, by reducing  23  Draghi, M. “The ECB’s recent monetary policy measures: Effectiveness and challenges.” Camdessus Lecture at the International Monetary Fund, 14 May 2015. 24  Bouis, R., O. Causa, L. Demmou, R. Duval, and A. Zdzienicka (2012), “The Short-Term Effects of Structural Reforms: An Empirical Analysis.” OECD Working Papers, no. 949. 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  uncertainty about the future macro- and microeconomic outlook, supports monetary policy by releasing the pent-up investment demand that accommodative policy creates. It should therefore be clear that the argument that accommodative monetary policy constitutes an excuse for governments and parliaments to postpone their reform efforts is incorrect. In fact, I would submit it actually makes reforms less socially and politically costly, as it reduces the time it takes for reforms to produce positive effects.

And this is why, as I have said many times, I believe there is a strong case for governance of structural reforms to be exercised jointly at the euro area level: to help each country to achieve the necessary level of resilience; and to ensure that they maintain that resilience permanently. 4 Since structural reforms in any euro area country are a legitimate interest of the whole union, there needs to be stronger ownership of reforms not just at the national level, but at the European level as well. Several countries have however made significant progress with structural reforms during the crisis, and we can already see how this has altered the relationship between inflation and unemployment. Various estimates of the euro area Phillips curve show that, while the slope has varied over time, it has steepened in recent years. In particular, there is evidence that inflation has become increasingly responsive to cyclical conditions in countries that have reformed their product and labour markets, such as Spain 5 and Italy 6. Raising potential growth Besides this issue of resilience, as the central bank of the euro area we also have another, equally direct interest in structural reforms. This is related to their effect on growth – or more specifically, the challenges posed by a period of low potential growth. International institutions currently estimate potential growth to be below 1% in the euro area, compared with above 2% in the US (Chart 3).
Second, are growing capital market activities involving credit risk, such as equity and corporate debt underwriting, foreign exchange and credit derivatives, and securitization creating new liquidity stresses, in particular, greater liquidity risk for financial institutions and their customers, when credit quality declines? Third, to what extent are markets signaling greater uncertainty about the nature and level of risks in the world economy given the tremendous structural change in the world financial system and the world economy over the last two decades? Fourth, what do recent market developments tell us about the capacity of financial firms to define and manage risk, or to fully understand their own risk profile? The question of what current market conditions may be signaling about confidence in prior credit judgments is especially important for supervisors. For example, do supervisors need to revise what they expect banks to know about their customers, their business strategies and the business purpose of their transactions? In the run-up to the recent market problems, we have seen customers make use of innovations in financial products and strategies developed since the mid1980s to a much greater extent than before. For example, banks, corporations and governments in the emerging markets world are far more involved in foreign currency funding, derivatives markets and use of the international capital markets for debt issuance than before. New groups of institutional customers, such as hedge funds, are devoted almost exclusively to developing and executing strategies based on innovative financial instruments and techniques.

These questions of credit analysis and risk control are an integral part of the current work of the Basle Committee on credit risk management. The starting point for that work is a paper describing the framework for traditional credit risk management by banks. That framework can then be used to consider how changes in the financial markets affect the credit process. In addition to the issues I’ve described, this work will look at the impact of other developments such as credit risk models, credit derivatives and securitization. One goal of this work is to identify areas of risk management which are improving, and those which may need strengthening, especially potential problems in the internal controls that prevent and detect breakdowns in risk control. The second question, how the larger role of capital markets activities is affecting liquidity risk, also involves a reconsideration of the guidance the Basle Committee developed a decade ago. The recent market turmoil has been especially hard on emerging market banks which funded domestic currency assets with unhedged foreign currency liabilities. The liquidity risk of concentrations on the asset side of the balance sheet has a different significance when assets are sold not only to raise cash but also to conduct portfolio management, which assumes generally liquid markets. Moreover, we are seeing new liquidity needs arising from the changed funding practices of customers.
th  The 11 anniversary of the start of the global financial crisis But I couldn’t give a speech in September 2018 without marking an anniversary – though the one I’m most th  interested in is an 11 anniversary – the year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers – which I will use to frame my comments today. th  On 9 August 2007, BNP Paribas froze three of its investment funds, citing lack of liquidity in sections of the US securitised debt market. Fear spread. First the cost of interbank funding spiked, and then the interbank funding markets effectively froze, as credit concerns and liquidity hoarding spread amongst firms. Northern Rock, with a business model depending on its ability to access funding markets, experienced what started as an electronic run. In September 2007 the Bank announced it was providing emergency financial support to Northern Rock, and shortly after that we saw the first physical run on a bank in the UK in over a century. There are two key strands evident in these events, both related to the increasing interconnectedness of the financial system. The first was the valuation of the underlying assets in many derivatives and securitisations. The US subprime mortgage market, we now know, was overvalued. It might have been a containable problem, had these mortgages not been packaged up into ever more complicated transactions, distributed around the banking system, allowing a domestic US housing crash to become a global problem of the first order.

Ong Chong Tee: Confidence in and resilience of the life insurance industry Speech by Mr Ong Chong Tee, Deputy Managing Director (Financial Supervision) of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Life Insurance Association (LIA) Annual Luncheon 2015, Singapore, 4 March 2015. *  *  *  Dr Khoo Kah Siang, President of the Life Insurance Association, Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen. 1. Thank you for inviting my colleagues and I to the Association’s 13th Annual Luncheon. 2. Modern life insurance is said to have its beginnings in London more than 300 years ago by a company called Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance, with the aim of allowing an amicable distribution of contributions to be made by deceased members to their surviving wives and children. But even during the times of Ancient Rome, it is believed that some forms of life insurance existed to help mitigate the costs of burials of deceased members and to provide for their surviving families. While clearly much has changed in the industry, the central tenet of the industry has remained – to provide financial protection to dependants and in current times, also as a means of savings and wealth management. 3. A life insurance purchase is in essence a legal promise. In exchange for payment of premiums, an insurer will honour claims and make payment as agreed under the insurance policy. Hence given the typically long term nature of the commitments, confidence in and resilience of the life insurance industry must underscore its growth and development.
Though it’s also been rising, price  2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  2  inflation for (largely non-tradable) consumer services is currently close to its average during the inflation targeting period. Another indication is that we’ve seen similar surges in inflation in many other developed economies as well (Chart 3). This is a global phenomenon. And what’s striking is that this has happened even though global (UK-weighted) economic activity has only just returned – and in several individual countries has yet to return – to pre-pandemic levels (Chart 4). In the UK, in the third quarter of the year, output in the private sector – the part of the economy that actually sets prices – was still 2% lower than it had been at the end of 2019. More often than not higher inflation is associated with stronger, not weaker, economic activity. At least if you consider the last eighteen months or so as a whole, taking account not just of the resurgence this year but the huge contractions in 2020, that’s not what’s happened on this occasion. Chart 3. Inflation has risen significantly in many countries... UK  Euro area  US  Chart 4.

Jiří Rusnok: The future of monetary policy - what can we see as the dust has settled? Opening remarks by Mr Jiří Rusnok, Governor of the Czech National Bank, at the High-Level Economic Conference, Prague, 16 June 2019. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, dear guests, I wish you a good morning. It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this high-level conference on “The Future of Monetary Policy: What Can We See as the Dust Has Settled?” hosted by the Czech National Bank. This conference is organised as part of this year’s celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the introduction of our national currency – named the koruna – in 1919. Before I give the floor to the distinguished speakers, let me first make a few remarks that will set the stage for the upcoming event. During the past 100 years, our currency and the overall economic situation of our country has enjoyed times of economic prosperity, but also some more difficult periods. This alternation between good and bad times applies elsewhere. Before the outbreak of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008, it seemed that monetary policy had triumphed. Inflation in advanced countries and elsewhere had decreased to low and stable levels. The goal of price stability had been achieved. Central banks were using standard tools with well understood transmission mechanisms. The outbreak of the Great Recession suddenly changed this perspective. The GFC brought significant economic slack and deflationary tendencies to many countries. In response, central banks started using unconventional tools.
Most recently, after OPEC agreements and announcements by other producers that they would limit production, it is trading around 55 3 / 19  BIS central bankers' speeches  dollars per barrel. I now turn to our projections and associated risks. In the baseline scenario of the MP Report I present today, this year’s growth is estimated at 1.5%. As I said, this is the lower bound of the range we estimated in September, considering the slower growth foreseen for the fourth quarter. About 2017, the slower initial pace, in a context of higher risks and still very pessimistic confidence levels, we foresee that activity will take longer to resume near-potential growth. Accordingly, our growth estimate for 2017 has been adjusted to a range between 1.5% and 2.5% (1.75% to 2.75% in September). This higher growth in 2017 compared with 2016 is based on the fact that the economy does not present any imbalances, the mining sector will not to repeat the sharp drops of previous years, and investment will post some increase after three years in a row falling in annual terms. The effects of these changes will be seen more clearly in the second half of the year. All this, in a context where the fiscal consolidation announced by the government continues and monetary conditions remain expansionary. Excluding inventories, domestic demand will grow 2% in 2017. Just as in 2016, we expect private consumption to boost expenditure, considering a further gradual adjustment of the labor market and lower inflation driving real wages.

In Banking Banana Survey this year indicated that technology risk rose from no. 18 in 2012 survey to no. 4 due to a high increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyber-attacks. Financial institutions have exposed to all risks of technology security: access risk, accuracy risk, availability risk, and agility risk. Concerning the systemic risks, the Bank of Thailand as a regulator established the IT principle called “SIA”, which stands for Security, Integrity and Availability that covers infrastructure protection at the prevention stage of both physical and logical controls: CCTV / access control; firewall, IDS / IPS, AntiVirus and password, respectively. In the arrangement of contingency plan, all systems will be tested or reviewed regularly. Furthermore, key risk indicators and risk tolerance will be closely monitored, and loss data collection will be reported to the board of directors and the Bank of Thailand. Lastly, the Bank of Thailand has to correct the IT contingency plan implementation. Additionally, market conduct will serve as an alignment to each stage to determine customer protection by sharing correct information and suggestions to customers; and by interacting with customers’ complains. As a central bank, we wish to support more on inter-operability for both wholesale and retail which is a part of standard setting I mentioned earlier: for example, standardized codes for all banks and real sector.
Timothy F Geithner: Principles to guide the future evolution of financial supervision and regulation Remarks by Mr Timothy F Geithner, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Bond Market Association's Annual Meeting 2006, New York, 19 May 2006. *  *  *  Thanks for inviting me to speak to you today. You are meeting at a time of significant confidence in the strength of the global economy and in the overall health of the financial system. On the available evidence, the core of the U.S. financial system is stronger than it has been in some time. Capital levels are higher and earnings stronger and more diversified. This strength is the result of many factors. It is the result of the length and strength of the economic expansion in the United States and the associated improvements in credit fundamentals. It reflects increases in the scale and scope of the operations of the largest institutions. It is the result of the dramatic innovations in the technology of finance and in the opportunities that has created for managing risk more effectively. And it reflects the increased integration of national financial institutions and the resulting competitive pressure and opportunities for diversification. We have seen substantial improvements in risk management practice and in internal controls over the past decade. These improvements are the product of large investments in people and technology, as well as changes to the internal architecture around control and compliance.

So, I invite you to come to Hong Kong, experience the vibrant ecosystem firsthand, put your most innovative ideas and best technology here, and take advantage of the many business opportunities. I promise the journey will be rewarding in many ways. 33. Thank you. Last revision date : 31 October 2022
While some initiatives during the pandemic demonstrated willingness for increased global cooperation and solidarity in crisis times (for instance the IMF's emergency financing, debt relief initiatives, and SDR allocation), the more recent trade and investment fragmentation trends may put in jeopardy global policy coordination efforts. And while business strategies such as near-shoring and friend-shoring may be justified by security motives, government inward-oriented policies can be costly, distortionary and of limited efficiency. As an alternative, we should think of more ways to improve international cooperation, not impede it. Climate change mitigation and adaptation or Sustainable Development Goals are examples of global public goods where governments can achieve important economic and social goals through global cooperation, and can easily fail without it. When talking about lessons from recent past, let me, for a moment, go further back in history, and use the opportunity of being here in Dubrovnik, to draw some parallels with the medieval Republic of Ragusa (the old name of the city-state of Dubrovnik). The history of old Ragusa was also not immune to external shocks, such as wars, natural disasters (earthquakes), trade interruptions and epidemics. In fact, in the medieval times, the dangers were far more serious than those we are facing today. In addition to conflicts, there was a constant threat of food shortages and diseases. So, navigating in choppy waters was exactly what the policymakers of Ragusa were doing so successfully for centuries – both literally and metaphorically.

The higher is the trust in the institutions, the easier it is done. And institutions themselves build credibility in the times of crisis. The second lesson is adaptability. Although resilience and adaptability are linked, they are different in important ways. Resilience entails enduring a challenge, while adaptability refers to the ability to thrive beyond it. In the EU, progress on this front is evident. We have been moving from reactive policies to strategic decision-making. The recent crises brought about some tectonic institutional enhancements: the early months of the pandemic led to the establishment of the EU recovery fund, which constituted a breakthrough for the financial solidarity of member states. The Next Generation EU package provided an anchor for investment in the  2/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  green and digital transitions in a way that will support resilience and adaptability in the long term. Finally, the REPowerEU Plan aims to end dependence on Russian fossil fuels, but also entails measures for energy savings, new energy storage rules, and a strategy to buy energy together. That being said, adaptability is difficult to nurture, as we often tend to stick to existing patterns of behaviour and decision-making, especially when there is no imminent crisis that would push changes and force us to think outside the box. The last lesson that I'd like to mention (though you can derive more) is cooperation.