Products that we should see more of are, for example, basic savings account with no minimum balance to cater for the low-income group, low-fee payment and transfer services, micro insurance for farmers, and increased information-based lending to small businesses complementing to collateral-based lending. 5  Despite the high level of access to finance in Thailand relative to other emerging Asian countries, the Bank of Thailand regards financial inclusion as one of our top priorities. In collaboration with both banks and non-banks, we have continually put our efforts to promote financial access in many areas. They include, for instance, SMEs’ credit guarantee scheme, free-of-charge fund transfer through our new faster payment system for any amount up to 5,000 Thai Baht (approximately equivalent to 145 US dollar), no-fee bank savings account, nano finance to accommodate small borrowers, as well as the new Business Securities Act to widen the scope of eligible collateral for secured lending. In addition, we will soon launch an unsecured debt restructuring scheme for individual borrowers with multi-creditors to address the household debt overhang. To ensure a “good quality” financial inclusion, financial literacy and financial technology literacy are crucial life skills for both households and small businesses. Effective financial literacy would help increased consumers’ financial discipline and understandings of financial products and their risks. Thus, deepening such basic knowledge and turning concepts into changing behaviour would be particularly helpful to shelter vulnerable businesses and households from getting themselves into over indebtedness or stuck with unsuitable financial contracts.

The Asian Miracle decades in the 1980s and 1990s were largely fueled by the industrialization, rapid capital accumulation, migration of cheap labour, urbanization, emergence of middle class, and hot money, largely supported by banks at the core of financial intermediary. The “miracles” eventually turned out to be a crisis in the making, and Asia had learned the lessons the harshest way. Fortunately, Asia has come a long way after the Asian Financial Crisis. A series of structural reforms were carried out to reduce structural weaknesses, improve growth potential and safeguard monetary and financial stability. Policies, including monetary and exchange rate policies, prudential regulations and supervision, as well as legal and market infrastructures, have been redesigned to prevent distorted incentives that could lead to vulnerabilities or building up of fragility in the system. Thus far, the Asian economies’ and financial systems’ resilience has been well tested by the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath. However, against the backdrop of the increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world we live in today, we cannot be complacent and I think it is not an overstatement to say that the real challenges still lie ahead for Asian financial systems. Ladies and gentlemen, After the Global Financial Crisis, the persistently low-growth and low-yield environment has affected Asian banks in various channels. Deteriorating asset quality with higher credit costs tends to outweigh benefits of the lower funding costs, thereby squeezing profit margins.