samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Muhammad bin Ibrahim: The changes in Malaysia’s insurance sector Keynote address by Mr Muhammad bin Ibrahim, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the 6th Malaysian Insurance Summit, Kuala Lumpur, 18 October 2016. *  *  *  Reaching the point of inflection on the “S-curve” Over a decade ago in the Insurance Annual Report 2000, Bank Negara Malaysia projected that Malaysia’s insurance sector would expand following the trajectory of an “S-curve”. Growth in both the life and general insurance markets would significantly outpace the economy, ascending the steep slope up the “S-curve”. Since then, total assets of the insurance and takaful sector have expanded at an annual rate of 13.3%, more than tripling in value from RM52 billion in 2000 to RM181 billion in 2010. Life insurance penetration increased from 33% to 51% of the Malaysian population over the same period. In the more recent years however, this growth has started to plateau. Life insurance penetration has remained stagnant at 55% for the past 3 years, while in the general insurance sector, domestic capacity for larger and more specialised risks appears to be reaching its limits. This in turn has contributed towards sustained reinsurance outflows which have an impact on the country’s long term current account balances. Based on our observations, the industry appears to be approaching the point of inflection in the “S-curve”. Yet we know that its growth potential remains significant, with Malaysia still a long way from being a saturated market.

As a catalyst for such innovations, I am pleased to announce that following a public consultation process, the Bank has today issued details of the Financial Technology Regulatory Sandbox. Effective immediately, financial institutions and fintech companies will now be able to pilot innovations in a controlled, live-test environment with appropriate flexibilities accorded. This will include flexibilities under existing regulatory requirements that apply to outsourcing arrangements and access to customer information, subject to compensating safeguards. The experience from the sandbox will provide input into formulating more proportionate regulations that will spur the orderly growth of new innovations in the financial industry, including insurance. We see significant potential for positive disruptions to transform the business of insurance and takaful in Malaysia – from the way insurance is consumed, to opportunities for addressing leakages to drive insurance costs lower. Indeed, the greatest gains from technological innovations may well be reaped in the more mundane aspects of running a business efficiently. Today, money is still being left on the table from inefficiencies and leakages in the insurance system. From inefficient manual  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  processes to the slow take-up of electronic payments, there are large gaps in the supply chain that unduly increase the cost of insurance and limit efforts to combat insurance fraud. The insurance industry needs to accelerate its pace in terms of its technological adoption or else events will dictate the shape of the industry’s future.
For the surviving clearing members, they would suddenly find themselves having unmatched positions, with continuing obligations to clients but a non-performing CCP on the other side. Two strategies come to mind, which I am airing for debate. The first would be “recapitalising” the CCP so that it can carry on. The second would be to aim to bring off a more or less smooth unwinding of the CCP’s book of transactions. On the former route, in the banking sphere the basic strategy is to develop regimes for bondholders to share in the losses after the equity is wiped out; a distressed bank gets “recapitalised” in some way through a reconstruction of its liabilities. But CCPs do not issue debt, so there is not obviously an economic equivalent of recapitalisation by way of haircutting the debt claims of bondholders. Recapitalisation would seem to entail an injection of new outside capital. That should not come from the public sector. So the only options are the surviving clearing members themselves or a new “owner”. On the face of it, the clearing members would have to be involved, as surely the stricken CCP’s default fund would also need replenishing in order for it to continue. If the default fund were to be replenished by its surviving clearing members, that could in principle be sorted out at the time or it could be pre programmed. In practice, making it up at the time must be dangerous.

BIS Review 122/2007  UNIDROIT or UNCITRAL] have turned the focus of their activities on financial market issues, such as secured transactions or cross-border holdings and transfers of securities. This focus is mirrored by a multitude of complementary initiatives on the European level, where I would just like to mention the various legislative projects aimed to enhance the integration of the EU financial markets that were combined in the so-called Financial Services Action Plan as well as the more recent attempts to enhance efficiency and integration in the EU post-trading industry, that is the clearing and settlement of cross-border securities transactions. 4. Lessons of the recent market turmoil  Turning to more recent events, the emergence of structured products, where the creditor is separated from the debtor by a complex financial infrastructure that transforms and repackages the underlying asset, might create significant legal challenges and this might become an important concern in the light of the recent market turmoil. Who pays if debtor A defaults, in case his debt has been repackaged by bank B, sold to the non-bank intermediary C and finally to investor D? These are legitimate questions that need to be addressed carefully. But answers have to be given if the uncertainties surrounding the current environment are to vanish.
The financial system was only saved from total seizure through the prompt and internationally co-ordinated action of the authorities to inject extra capital into the banks, guarantee their funding and boost the provision of liquidity. Around the same time, the confidence of businesses and households, already weak, collapsed. Many businesses told us the same story – that orders “fell off a cliff” in September and October. That story was repeated around the world, and is evident in the surveys of business activity (see Chart 1) and more recently in the first estimates for growth in the final quarter of last year. The global economy is now in the throes of a sharp and synchronised downturn. Banks have responded to the loss of confidence in the financial markets, and the deterioration in economic prospects more generally, by tightening the terms and availability of credit so as to bolster their weakened balance sheets. That threatens to generate an adverse feedback loop: the worse the outlook becomes, the lower the chance of a loan being repaid and the more cautious the banks become about extending new loans, making the outlook yet bleaker. We hear many stories of businesses finding credit harder to get, though I understand that a recent NFU survey found that farmers’ relationships with their bankers remained fairly good. The only bright spot – at least for most of us, if not for you – has been the collapse in commodity prices as the slowdown spread to the emerging market economies.

So even if the near term looks bleak, there is reason to expect an improvement as we move into the latter part of the year. Chart 6 shows our latest projection for four-quarter GDP growth, assuming that Bank Rate follows the path expected by the markets. The most likely path is represented by the darkest green band. In this scenario, output continues to contract in the near term, as the weakening labour market and increased uncertainty weigh on consumption, businesses run down inventories and reduce investment, and the weakness in world demand inhibits exports. But activity gradually recovers in 2010, reflecting the strength of the policy stimulus and the substantial boost from the lower level of sterling. However, it is possible that efforts to restore the banking system may take longer to bear fruit, and that the adoption of protectionist measures abroad as the downturn deepens may slow the recovery. BIS Review 19/2009  3  Consequently the risks are heavily weighted to the downside, with roughly a three in four chance of growth turning out weaker than in the central case. Our associated projection for CPI inflation is shown in Chart 7. In the most likely path – represented by the deep red line – inflation continues to fall from its current value of 3.1%, falling below the 2% target in the spring, reflecting the impact of the Government’s VAT cut and the fall in energy prices.
Put simply, the more people who use or accept an instrument of payment, the greater benefit each consumer or merchant has from using or accepting it. Few people would want to have a card if there were not sufficient traders who accepted card payments. Traders on their part would not want to accept card payments if there were not enough consumers willing to pay with cards. In other words, a critical mass of users is needed for a payment instrument to be generally accepted and successful. When fewer and fewer people are using a payment instrument, one gradually reaches a point where it is no longer profitable to continue using the instrument. Then it will disappear from the market, which was the case with cheques in Sweden in the 1990s. Given that the use of cash is declining rapidly, there is reason to wonder whether we are now reaching the same point with regard to cash. Ac-  1 On 31 October 2017 there was SEK 45.2 billion in valid banknotes in circulation, with the 1,000-krona banknote accounting of SEK3.5 billion of this. The value of the valid coins was SEK 2.7 billion, including commemorative coins (SEK 34 million). 2 [6]  cording to current research, half of Swedish traders believe they will stop accepting cash by 2025. In other words, for Sweden the cashless society is no longer just a hypothetical situation in the distant future.

This approach should be a consensual approach of the shareholders, a transparent one, where everybody, sponsors and countries of operations agree on the principles and objectives. Ladies and gentlemen, 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  Allow me to conclude by saying that the National Bank of Romania strongly supports the partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. We appreciate the assistance provided and its benefits and positive impact. We will remain your reliable partner, as always. I invite Mr. Eugen Teodorovici, Minister of Finance and Governor to the EBRD to give his keynote speech on “Romanian Government Program and Future Presidency of the European Union Council”. I wish you fruitful and successful discussions. Thank you. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
 Thank you  4  Figure 1 Panel A: Federal Funds Rates (percent) 9 8 7  Fed fund  1994  2004  2015  1999  6 5 4 3 2 1 0 90  92  94  96  98  00  02  04  06  08  10  12  14  16  Source: Bloomberg  Panel B: Fed Funds Hiking Cycles (percentage points) 4,5  1994 1999 2004 2015 (Futures) 2015 (FOMC)  4,0 3,5 3,0 2,5 2,0 1,5 1,0 0,5 0,0  0 2 4 6 8 10121416182022242628303234363840424446 0  1Y  2Y  3Y  Source: Bloomberg  5  Figuree 2 Panel A: Spread 10 0‐years and 2‐years, US G Government Bonds, basiss points (*)  (*) Red mark indicates th he start of the 1999 cycle.

If governments wish, for political or humanitarian reasons, to ease further the contractual debt burden of an indebted country, this should be carried forward as a conscious and transparent policy decision, which would surely involve usage of taxpayers' money unless it was reliant on coercion of banks. In practice, there are many developing countries which are effectively cut off from commercial bank finance because of a track record of default, political instability, economic mismanagement, corruption and so on. Banks generally need certain minimum assurances, relating to the political climate, the legal system, transparency, corporate governance, etc, over and above the narrower assessment of the servicing capacity of the borrower. Fortunately, most economies in the APEC fold can be classified as open for bank finance. But there are many other countries in the world which are passed over by the international banking community because of the lack of the basic essential attributes, or because they are simply too poor to afford credit on commercial terms, in which case they become dependent on concessional finance from the international institutions as the only reasonably accessible source of external funding. Banks have to abide by prudent standards. Regulators, depositors and shareholders all expect as much. Most banks would leap at the chance to lend more to assist development, if such lending was assessed to be commercially viable.
8  BIS Review 69/2010  The global financial crisis has shown that credit cycles and property market bubbles that burst represent one of the greatest challenges to economic policy. The experience of many countries over several decades has shown that house prices and residential mortgage lending usually rise prior to the outbreak of a banking crisis. 1 In Norway, interest rate expenses can be deducted from taxable income, while capital gains on dwellings and the benefit of home ownership are not taxed. Housing is taxed as an asset, but not at its market value. High tax subsidisation of home ownership and a large proportion of floating-rate loans contribute to considerable fluctuations in house prices in Norway. Furthermore, the rise in house prices over the past two decades has been high compared with countries where house price bubbles have now burst. High house prices and substantial household debt add to the economy’s vulnerability. In March, Finanstilsynet (Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway) issued new guidelines for prudent residential mortgage lending. The guidelines may have a somewhat dampening impact on the rise in debt and house prices. The global financial crisis has revealed weaknesses in the financial system. Regulation of financial institutions should seek to limit risk not only in individual banks, but also in the financial system as a whole. Risk is amplified by the interaction between financial institutions. Today, we can see that the crisis was amplified by the very surprise over the extent to which financial markets are interwoven.

Svein Gjedrem: The conduct of monetary policy Introductory statement by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the hearing before the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs of the Storting (Norwegian parliament), Oslo, 18 May 2010. Please note that the text below may differ from the actual presentation. The statement is based on Norges Bank’s Annual Report for 2009, Monetary Policy Report 1/10 and the Executive Board’s assessments in the period to the monetary policy meeting on 5 May. *  *  *  I would like to thank the Chairman of the Committee and also thank the Committee for this opportunity to report on the conduct of monetary policy in connection with the Storting’s deliberations on the Government’s Financial Market Report (previously the Credit Report). My statement is based on the Bank’s Annual Report, but is also updated based on the Executive Board’s assessments for the period to the previous monetary policy meeting and new information received to date. I also refer to this year’s report from Norges Bank Watch, a group of experts that evaluates Norges Bank’s conduct of monetary policy. 1. New imbalances  The most acute phase of the financial market crisis has for a period appeared to be over. In most parts of the world, output growth has resumed. The recovery has been strongest in emerging Asia. The upturn in OECD countries has been more moderate. The economies of many countries will continue to be marked by high levels of spare production capacity.
Jean-Pierre Roth: Recent financial and economic developments in Switzerland Introductory remarks by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the half-yearly media news conference, Geneva, 17 June 2004. *  *  *  The economy has developed in line with the expectations expressed in our monetary policy assessments of December and March. The economic recovery has increasingly gained hold in Switzerland and abroad and has become broader-based. Against this backdrop, we have reached the conclusion that the time has come for a slight tightening of monetary policy. The target range for the three-month Libor is being raised by 25 basis points with immediate effect and the Libor is being kept around 0.5%. This move reverses half of the latest interest rate cut of 6 March 2003; then the threemonth Libor was reduced from 0.75% to a historic low of 0.25% due to fears of deflation and the appreciation of the Swiss franc at that time. The interest rate range extends from 0.0% to 1.0%. Even after this adjustment our monetary policy will remain expansionary and continue to support the economic upswing. Let me offer some comments on our decision and the outlook for prices as summarised in the new inflation forecast. The graph provides you with the current and the last inflation forecasts. The dashdotted green curve is the March forecast, which presupposes that the three-month Libor rate would remain unchanged at 0.25% in the next three years.

Such a rise in prices cannot and may not be corrected with monetary policy measures as long as no wage-price spiral is set in motion. First, we do not know whether this price rise is a permanent or merely a temporary phenomenon. Second, the change in oil prices impacts directly on the price level, whereas monetary policy changes act only indirectly and after a considerable time lag. Third, higher oil prices constitute a cost shock that cannot be countered by means of monetary policy. Experience shows that a monetary policy which attempts to counteract the effects of a one-off increase in oil prices on the price level can cause considerable damage to the national economy. Furthermore, it must be noted that the present price increase is modest in a historical comparison. For example, during the second oil price shock at the end of the 1970s, oil cost approximately twice as much as today calculated at current prices. Our interest rate decision of today is thus not aimed at combating the effects of the oil price rise on inflation. The increase in oil prices nevertheless casts a shadow over the prospects for the economy, which are optimistic overall. We are not of the opinion, however, that the upswing is threatened by this. Model calculations have shown that higher oil prices would slow growth in Switzerland only moderately.
Thus, world growth is expected to average 3.5% in 2017–2018, with trading partners that will grow 3.3% in the same period, significantly matching the March forecasts. The copper price is also expected to remain at USD 2.55 per pound this year and USD 2.5 next year, and the oil price will average a little over USD 50 per barrel in the same time span (table 2). In the baseline scenario, monetary policy will remain expansionary through the entire projection horizon. Estimates use as a working assumption that the trajectory will be consistent with the various measures of expectations as of the closing of the Report (figure 10). As always, it must be stressed that this is a working assumption, not a commitment. Therefore, the conduct of monetary policy and possible adjustments to the MPR will be contingent on the effects of incoming information on the inflation outlook. Risk scenarios Abroad, the main sources of uncertainty remain linked to the factors identified in previous MP Reports. On the one hand, there is the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy in the United States and its impact on the global economy and on financial conditions. Also uncertainty about the political environment. In Europe, recent election results have been dissipating some of the political risks, in a context where growth has consolidated and data has been higher than expected, so a new boost from the region on the global economy cannot be ruled out.

Today I have shared with you two reports that reflect the institutional vision of the Central Bank on the macroeconomic picture, the outlook for inflation, the financial risks and the orientation of the policies that are our responsibility. These reports reflect how internal analyses and discussions operate in a shared vision and in institutional decisions. We have also tried to illustrate how the Bank's work on its two objectives of price stability and financial stability complement each other, strengthening our action in both dimensions. We are convinced that this action will boost the country's economic stability, reducing the risk of volatility and financial turmoil. However, as we have argued in the past, the Central Bank cannot, using its toolkit, avoid or reverse cycles, drive long-term growth or replace responsible behavior of economic agents. This challenge involves other financial, economic and political players. We hope that the Bank's diagnosis and action will contribute to this community of purposes. Thank you. 12  Figure 1 Inflation indicators (*) (annual change, percent)  8  8 CPI  Services EFE  6  6  4  4  2  2 Goods EFE  CPIEFE  0  0  -2  -2  -4  -4 13  14  15  16  17  (*) As from January 2014 the new indexes with annual base 2013=100 are used, so they are not strictly comparable with earlier figures. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Statistics Institute (INE).
On the other hand, inflation expectations one year ahead are not as interesting in this perspective. They do not say very much about the credibility of monetary policy, as inflation in the short term can deviate quite substantially from 2 per cent, even if monetary policy is well-balanced. The weak krona The financial crisis has also given rise to large fluctuations in the international foreign exchange markets. Investors have turned to large currencies, which are perceived as more liquid and secure. In this situation the krona has experienced the largest weakening since it was allowed to float in November 1992. The Riksbank does not have any target for the krona, but our assessment is that the weakening is temporary and primarily a result of the financial crisis. We are expecting the krona to strengthen again as the crisis wanes, partly because Sweden has for a long period of time had a stable surplus in its foreign trade. But there is a risk that the weakening will be more prolonged. This would lead to exports strengthening and imports slowing down, but at the same time provide an inflationary impulse. In the current situation this may be an advantage in the short term, as economic activity is now weak and inflation is low. But in the longer term a currency that fluctuates substantially can be a problem. It increases uncertainty. At the monetary policy meeting Lars E.O.

While there needs to be recognition of the prudential standards that have been issued by the Islamic Financial Services Board, there also needs to be awareness by the international community of the implications of the new standards that is being introduced on the Islamic financial system. This is important given the common interest of global financial stability. Let me conclude by saying that today’s launch of the Islamic Finance Gateway by Thomson Reuters marks another important milestone in the international development of Islamic finance. Such a comprehensive information and trading portal for foreign and domestic participation in the Islamic financial system will contribute towards its efficiency and effectiveness as a form of financial intermediation. On this note, I wish to congratulate Thomson Reuters on the occasion of the official global launch of this Islamic Finance Gateway. 2  BIS Review 20/2010