More often than not, small changes lead to major breakthroughs, if approached with an open mind and shared interests between providers and policymakers to genuinely serve the best interests of the unserved segments of society. In Malaysia, the agent banking initiative was an experiment in policymaking and regulation that has proved to be highly successful in both protecting the integrity of financial transactions, while significantly increasing financial inclusion. The agent banking initiative leveraged on existing high-volume touch points such as sundry shops, petrol stations and post offices to reach the rural population and perform basic banking transactions on behalf of financial institutions. The technology involved was hardly state-of-the-art, relying on POS terminals with real time connectivity, to back-end system of banks as well biometric identification, to meet the KnowYour-Customer requirements. Yet, it has enabled 99% of Malaysians, particularly those in rural areas, to conveniently access financial services, while saving up to 80% of costs in building brick-and-mortar bank branches. In February 2016, Bank Negara Malaysia also facilitated the implementation of the Investment Account Platform (IAP) which expands opportunities for retail and institutional investors to finance viable SME ventures more efficiently in a Syariah-compliant manner. Again, this was only possible because of technology. Conclusion This symposium is the inaugural gathering of public sector regulators, private sector innovators and funders that is specifically focused on how financial innovation can support financial inclusion.

Philipp Hildebrand: Lessons from the crisis for global financial market infrastructure Summary of a speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Zermatt Symposium, Avenir suisse, Zermatt, 25 August 2009. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The financial market infrastructure, in other words, the systems for trading, clearing and settling payments and financial instruments, is essential for the operation of the financial system. Thus far in the financial crisis, financial market infrastructure has stood up well overall and helped to prevent the existing uncertainty in the financial system from becoming even greater. This holds true both for payment and settlement systems in Switzerland and for the global financial market infrastructure. However, time and again, it becomes apparent that the infrastructure for clearing and settling transactions is not keeping up with rapidly growing financial markets. In recent years, this has been most obvious in the OTC derivatives market. Pressured by supervisory authorities and central banks, market participants are now developing safer and more efficient clearing and settlement arrangements for OTC derivatives. These efforts include the establishment of central counterparties, which facilitate market participants’ risk management, promote market transparency and reduce the complexity of the financial system. To the extent that the market infrastructure reduces the interconnections between individual financial institutions, it contributes to the long-term strategy aimed at finding ways of liquidating large and complex financial institutions in an orderly way.