samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Takaful operators have started publishing and 3/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  implementing new customer service charters. The industry must now walk the talk. In the next few months, a Customer Satisfaction Index Survey will be carried out to measure actual service levels against what operators promise. The results will be made public. Customers can shop around and make better informed choices when deciding who to trust to protect them. In this digital age, technology has changed the way we live, the way we save, and the way we bank. But it seems that little has changed in the takaful and insurance space. This perplexes me. This is quite telling from the industry’s attitude towards efficiency and innovation more generally. Mobile and internet penetration in Malaysia stand at about 132% and 81% respectively. There is potential to increase the offering of supplementary services online, such as vehicle anti-theft services and health advice, as a recent study by Bain & Company on insurance customers in 19 countries confirms. The industry can invest in its own capacity to deploy new technological solutions itself, or it can partner with others. The point is that it has to respond proactively, or risk being disrupted by others. Just a few weeks ago, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan announced a new venture to disrupt health insurance in the U.S. This is the reality that the industry has to face. Another issue that the industry is lagging behind is in terms of migration to e-payments. The use of cheques is still prevalent.

Takaful must shed its image as being an imitator, a follower or impersonator of conventional insurance. Takaful operators, including the financial groups to which they belong, must see beyond takaful as yet another line of insurance products. In this, we need the right leadership, shareholders included, to set the right tone from the senior leadership that takaful must offer distinctive benefits highly valued by all. Its impact must be lasting and profound. This is especially so in our system, where takaful is competing side by side with the insurance industry. 1/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  All this considered, allow me to suggest three priorities for the industry to embark on to realise the full potential of takaful: First, fulfill the promise of takaful in helping protect people and businesses. Takaful is derived from the Arabic word “kafal”, which means ‘to help’. To my mind, this calls for the industry to reach out beyond its comfort zone of focusing on mandatory products, such as motor and fire, or those that are easy to sell, namely mortgage related products. It must make serious inroads in other areas where protection gaps exist, such as in agricultural risk, annuity and trade credit. Something that is consistent with the needs of our economy. Ultimately, the industry must be ahead of the curve to innovate and deliver solutions that are truly needed and highly valued by customers, both individuals and businesses. In family takaful, the industry must position itself as a trusted and valued solution provider for all Malaysians.
•  Third, enhance supervisory colleges, which were designed to improve the exchange of information among supervisors with the goal of ensuring safe and sound banking practices, reducing the possibility of governmental assistance, and building confidence in the financial system. We need to make supervisory colleges more effective by going beyond basic information sharing. In addition to improving our information sharing, this should also include making sure that core colleges are appropriately constructed and reflect the key jurisdictions necessary to get a full picture of the risks of the firm; ensuring that the dialogue between supervisors and firms in college settings is robust and that the engagement among all parties is sufficiently high; and providing clear and direct feedback following supervisory colleges, both between supervisors and to the firm. Home supervisors should be providing host supervisors with feedback and, where necessary, direction on key risks and other issues requiring follow up in their jurisdictions. Host supervisors should be providing home supervisors with feedback on what they are seeing in their jurisdiction and how risks are evolving in their markets. And, finally, to ensure consistency of supervisory messages on group-wide issues, home and host supervisors should agree on key message to firms. Finally, supervisory colleges are a good way to promote more consistent supervision of globally active firms, and supervisors should leverage the college construct to reinforce more consistent application of global standards and risk management expectations across all firms.

And, for our part, we need to: •  improve our communications with firms, including being more timely and clearer in our feedback;  •  improve collaboration with home and other host supervisors; and,  •  make supervisory colleges more effective, by promoting more robust discussions and more direct feedback to firms. Thank you for your attention today. I look forward to continuing to work with you on these issues as we seek to enhance our supervisory programs. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5
After all, the levels of dealer  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  activity and of market liquidity in the run-up to the crisis were ephemeral. They did not serve the real economy. It is important that other parts of the financial system, such as asset managers, adapt to the new environment and manage liquidity positions prudently. But these developments should, and they are, prompting us to assess whether targeted amendments to the design of regulations could benefit the real economy, without exposing it to more risk. The design of new requirements was macroprudential. So must be their implementation. The system has come a long way on the march to more capital and greater resilience. The benefits of that are being seen today. Lending to real economies is growing again. Resilience is more insulated from questions about returns. With resolution regimes well advanced and game-changing bail-in principles established, the upward march to higher capital levels can soon reach the new baseline. A baseline that, on what we know today, protects the real economy without unnecessary risk of holding it back. And with the flexibility to adapt and continually align resilience with threats, we have a compelling answer to the question of how to marry prudence with macroeconomic sense. So that you can protect and serve the real economy in good times and bad. Thank you.

We estimate the full, net present value, economic costs of typical past financial crises to have been catastrophic – around 75% of GDP and in some cases much more. So nobody should deny the economic case for well capitalised banks. And it was obvious in the aftermath of the crisis where bank capital needed to go. Up. A lot. 2  Available at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/fsr/2015/fsrsupp.pdf. 3  Major UK banks are required to hold, on average, additional tier 1 capital of 2.5% of risk weighted assets under “pillar 2a” requirements. These compensate for existing shortcomings in risk measures and lift average capital requirements from 11% to 13.5%. Should the shortcomings in risk measures be corrected, measures of risk weighted assets would increase.But at the same time, our expectation for capital as a share of risk weighted assets would fall back. The two effects can be expected to offset so that no extra capital would be required. Ongoing work in the Basel Committee addressing excessive variability in risk weights should not materially affect overall capital requirements. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  In fact, with market confidence so low at the time, more capital not only boosted resilience, it was also needed for lending to resume. Capital was good for resilience and good for growth. That’s why countries that recapitalised their banking systems quickly secured earlier and stronger recoveries, with the US leading the way. However, after a point, another unit of capital buys a much smaller fall in the probability of bank failure.
Next to the broadening and deepening of the statistical framework the Bank of Albania will improve upon its communication with the public. We discussed during this Round Table the transparency of the Bank of Albania. We concluded that significant progress has been achieved. But next to transparency, the Bank of Albania wants to improve upon the information that it provides to the public. The Bank of Albania aims at making monetary policy understandable to everybody. We know already that money matters. The more money we possess, the more we can buy, and the more our economy will grow. The more our economy grows, the more people can share. Poverty will be reduced. But what about monetary policy? We all know that higher wages or lower prices are beneficial for our personal pockets. The higher the wages, or the lower the prices, the more we can buy. But for the Albanian economy as a whole, there is a flipside. This flipside is inflation. More spending will lead to higher prices in the medium to long term. And these higher prices, I can also say “higher inflation”, is damaging for the Albanian economic growth. For this reason the Bank of Albania safeguards price stability. Our main task is to keep prices stable. In order to do so, we set the main interest rate. The Bank of Albania wants to communicate better on all these monetary policy issues. It wants to explain the monetary and financial benefits at the micro and at the macro level.

They also depend upon other key players like the Ministry of Finance and they depend upon the efficient working of the financial markets. Other preconditions for Inflation Targeting can partly be met by the Bank of Albania. The full implementation of Inflation Targeting can therefore take place ONLY conditionally. One can compare this situation with the tailoring of a suit for a special occasion. Let me make this comparison. One can find a good tailor and ask him to make a suit for a special occasion. All measures can be taken, such as the length of the arms and the length of the legs. The suitable materials can be found. One needs the appropriate fabric, in the appropriate color. Upon all these preconditions of (1) the good tailor (2) the precise measures (3) suitable materials, the tailor can start the tailoring of the suit. But, there is still no guarantee that the suit will fit you perfect. Or, it may happen that you look appealing in the tailor-shop, but not at the day of the special occasion. For instance, the temperature may have fallen so that you need an additional coat, or even a different fabric. Or, the environment of the special occasion may make you look overdressed. You tried to make it perfect, but the environment is lagging behind. Factors that you could not influence yourself can make you look different from how you had wished to look with the new suit.
Erik Thedéen: My view of monetary policy Speech by Mr Erik Thedéen, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at Nordea, Stockholm, 23 March 2023. ***  Accompanying slides of the speech Good afternoon! Thank you for inviting me. I have now been Governor of the Riksbank for almost three months. It has been an intense period in which the most burning issue has of course been the far too high inflation that has not yet shown any clear sign of falling back. The past two weeks have also been marked by unease on the financial markets, which has made economic prospects more uncertain. The background to the concern is that a couple of US niche banks had problems with their liquidity and collapsed. This was followed by problems in the Swiss bank Credit Suisse – a different type of bank, but one that has wrestled with poor profitability and whose credibility has been eroded. These problems led to the bank being quickly taken over by its competitor UBS. The authorities in the United States and Switzerland have been working actively to resolve the problems. This weekend, the major central banks also launched a joint effort to make it easier for banks to obtain financing in dollars in general. Although the situation has become a little calmer, there is underlying concern that the problems will spread to other banks and further into the financial system. I think it is necessary to have a sensible but also sensitive attitude towards that risk.

The Riksbank may buy and sell such securities if there are exceptional reasons, as stated in the act. In principle, this means that we must make the assessment that other measures would not have the desired effect on the economy. The new act now also gives the Riksbank an explicit mandate to trade in securities within the framework of our task of contributing to the stability and efficiency of the financial system. For instance, the Riksbank may buy and sell securities to temporarily support financial markets for the purpose of counteracting a serious disturbance in the financial system, if there are exceptional reasons. The Riksbank's mandate remains strong  3/10  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  I will not go through all the details of the new act that have a bearing on monetary policy. The overall picture is that some things have changed. But the important thing is that we can do what we need to do to fulfil our tasks, in normal times and in times of crisis. The Riksbank has a strong and clear mandate to conduct flexible inflation targeting, where the overriding objective is for inflation to be lastingly low and stable. This is important now that the inflation target is being seriousl put to the test in a situation where inflation significantly overshoots the target for the first time since its introduction in 1995.
But to set the context on what I am going to say, given that financial markets cannot be discussed separately from the real economies, I want to begin with a few observations on the current macro and finance trends in the region. In the context of key macro and finance trends in the region, I think at least four developments stand out as the current defining themes. First is the region’s much improved economic resilience and fundamentals. These qualities now offer the region a prospect of continued strong long-term growth and potentials. At the same time, the region’s financial prowess – in terms of high saving rates, current account surpluses, and strong international reserves – has continued to improve, and thereby enhances the region’s financial influence in the global economy. Next is the increased interdependency. With the growth in economic activities, we are also seeing more economic interdependency within the region, especially in trade, and especially in trade between China and the rest of the region. Intra-regional trade is now the largest component of total trade for most East Asian economies. And its momentum has been an important driver of the region’s trade and economic growth. And third is the growth of finance, flows, and market transactions, propelled by the increase in trade and investment between the region and the rest of the world and also by trade within the region.

Some market participants have become more inclined to engage in "short-termism", that is, they might be too preoccupied with their short-term results. This trend might result, in particular, from growing pressure to yield immediate financial results that are not necessarily sustainable. Marking-to-market all assets and liabilities has also contributed to this widespread focus on immediate financial performances. This focus on short-term performance can translate into additional volatility in the price discovery process: the shorter the investment horizon of market participants, the bigger the impact of any new information on prices. Mimetic behaviour is by no means a new phenomenon on financial markets. However, technological developments on markets may have gradually reinforced this type of behaviour. The spread of benchmarking, which allows fund managers and clients to measure performance against that of other funds, together with the growing competition within the sector, appears to have increased such mimetic behaviour. Some operators have come to the conclusion that it is better to be wrong along with everybody else, rather than take the risk of being right, or wrong, alone. A striking example of rational mimetic behaviour is the influence that hedge funds enjoyed, a few years ago, as "opinion leaders" and trend makers. By its nature, trend following amplifies the imbalance that may at some point affect a market, potentially leading to vicious circles of price adjustments and liquidation of positions.
Over the past few quarters, the pace of economic growth has picked up and the broad consensus is that the U.S. economy will grow at about a 2 ½–3 percent annual rate over the next year.1 Will these forecasts once again turn out to be too optimistic? Subject to a few caveats that I discuss later, my view is that the likelihood of another disappointment has lessened. The consensus forecast seems like a reasonable expectation, in part, because several of the “headwinds” restraining U.S. economic activity in recent years have subsided. First, the housing sector is currently in much better balance. The overhang of housing associated with the housing boom has largely been absorbed, and a recovery in housing prices has significantly shrunk the proportion of borrowers that are underwater on their mortgages – that is, those households that have outstanding mortgage balances higher than the value of their homes. Also, measures of distress such as mortgage delinquencies and homes entering the foreclosure process have fallen. Second, consumers are in better financial shape. Households are carrying less debt, with total household liabilities roughly $ billion below their cyclical peak in 2008. Moreover, lower interest rates have facilitated significant mortgage debt refinancing, which has lowered the household debt service burdens. Depending on the particular measure used, household debt service burdens relative to income have fallen back to levels last seen in the 1980s and 1990s.

Ladies and gentlemen, The growing evolution and demand for online financial services will lead to greater digitisation of banking services. While the use of cash and cheques will continue to be important, more consumers are realising the convenience and flexibility of electronic banking in meeting their daily payment needs. The change in consumer behaviour is reflected in the increasing use of electronic payment systems in the country. The volume of cheques processed through the cheque clearing centres has shown a declining trend in terms of both volume and value. This has been reinforced by the introduction of the interbank Giro and Internet banking three years ago. The number of interbank Giro payments has more than quadrupled in 2002, while electronic funds transfer and bill payments conducted through Internet banking has been on an increasing trend. More customers are likely to be drawn to Internet banking, which is gaining acceptance in Malaysia with now over 1 million subscribers. Increases have also been recorded in the number and value of ATM transactions and card payments. Ladies and gentlemen, While the pace of the transition from paper-based payment instruments and systems to electronic instruments is increasing, the adoption of electronic payment solutions needs to be accelerated. Consumers and businesses have to become familiar with using the new payment methods and their advantages. The SMEs, in particular, should take advantage of electronic delivery systems to improve their access to banking services and finance. This would be an initial step toward venturing into e-commerce as a means to penetrate new markets.
I know that the decisions concerning the repayment of bondholders in the former Anglo Irish Bank have been a source of controversy. Decisions taken by the Irish authorities such as these are not taken lightly. And the consequences of subsequent actions are weighed carefully. It is true that the ECB viewed it as the least damaging course to fully honour the outstanding senior debts of Anglo. However unpopular that may now seem, this assessment was made at a time of extraordinary stresses in financial markets and great uncertainty. Protecting the hard-won gains and credibility from the early successes in 2011 was also a key consideration, to ensure no negative effects spilled-over to other Irish banks. Determined action and a willingness to take tough, even controversial decisions, has placed Ireland’s financial system on a steadier footing. A necessary step for Ireland to emerge from this crisis will be to ensure the long-term viability of the banking system as a pillar of the Irish economy. Doing so will further enhance confidence in the system and limit the burden that the banking system places on the taxpayer. Any proposal to reorganize and strengthen the Irish banking sector, and in this context to replace promissory notes with support from the EFSF must meet important criteria, including that it should improve the chances of both the State and the banks returning to market-based funding, and of the banks reducing their extraordinary reliance on the Eurosystem. The ECB is ready to work with the Irish authorities on such proposals.

The ECB is obliged and can be trusted to always fulfil its role and deliver on its Treaty mandate, and this is above all to secure price stability in the euro area as a whole, which consists of 17 countries. And there are clear limits to what the central bank is entitled or even able to do. It is impossible for the ECB to provide guarantees or assurances concerning future funding amounts or interest rates over the medium term. Certain tasks should and can in Europe only be dealt with by the Member States, and not by the ECB or the Central Bank of Ireland. Our common objective therefore must be to reduce over time the reliance of Irish banks on central bank funding and in particular on the emergency liquidity assistance. The Irish government has the capacity to further consolidate and implement the necessary reforms, so that there will be no lingering doubts about the sustainability of government debt. I am thus confident that Ireland will continue to fully implement the necessary adjustment and reforms, and that on this basis, Member States will continue to show solidarity towards Ireland. I understand that Minister Noonan has said that champagne corks will be popped on the night the Troika leaves Dublin. As long as Ireland continues to implement fully its programme and preserves its credibility as a State that honours all its obligations, I think that day will come in the not too long future, at the end of this programme in 2013.