Before I end my remarks, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the importance of continuing a close and effective partnership in Islamic finance between Malaysia and the UK. Collaboration between financial centres in Islamic finance is an important part of the process  4  BIS Review 161/2010  that would contribute towards expanding global development of the industry. With London’s keen ambition to establish itself as the center in Islamic finance in Europe, there is certainly much room for cooperation between Kuala Lumpur and London. The importance of our relationship has been cemented not long ago with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between Bank Negara Malaysia and the UK Trade and Investment. Our strong collaborative endeavors are already visible in the area of education and capacity building, evidenced by the growing number of strategic alliances between several Malaysian and the UK education and training institutions in recent years. Several UK financial institutions have also successfully established presence through joint-venture with local partners in our takaful market. I am most hopeful that there will be more collaborative endeavors going forward to exploit the strength and synergies between the two centers, particularly in areas that will lead to enhancing the efficiency of Islamic finance and greater cross-border transactions. On that note, I wish all of you a successful Workshop. Thank you. BIS Review 161/2010  5

I am confident that this constructive engagement in which regulators across our regional blocs have worked together will continue in other equivalence assessments, such as in the areas of financial benchmarks and organised markets or trading platforms. As we have learnt from past experience, greater clarity in equivalence assessments, including in relation to timing, can help provide greater certainty and thereby support the continued participation of European market participants in overseas markets and vice versa. International standards and peer assessments as basis for equivalence assessment Allow me to highlight one area where international standards and peer assessments have allowed a good basis for equivalence assessment – for financial market infrastructure (FMI). Market functioning, and therefore financial stability, is dependent on the continuity and orderly operation of services provided by these infrastructures. The multilateral nature of FMIs also mean that their services are often cross-border and accessed by a wide range of market participants. Since the development of the PFMI by IOSCO and the BIS Committee for Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), these standards have been used by many regulators including Singapore as a key basis for comparability assessments. CPMI-IOSCO has also been conducting Level 2 assessments of jurisdictions’ implementation of the PFMI. Assessments of the EU, Japan, US and Australia are complete, and assessments of Singapore and Hong Kong are under way. Such peer assessments against international standards will help to promote greater understanding and alignment amongst various jurisdictions’ frameworks. Peer assessments have also helped to identify and close gaps at the entity level.