purchases of securities lowered risk - free interest rates, compressed risk premia across financial assets over the whole range of the yield curve and encouraged portfolio rebalancing towards lending to households and firms. thus, the purchases supported the smooth functioning of the transmission mechanism, and the progress towards our inflation aim. as a result, financing conditions improved considerably, with a positive impact on macroeconomic performance. in this regard, various studies7 provide evidence that the negative interest rate policy had a positive impact on the growth of loans provided to firms. at the same time, the positive effects of low rates on economic activity have led to fewer non - performing loans, rising property values and to a reduction in loan - loss provisions. in the absence of these standard and non - standard measures, that reinforced each other, inflation and growth would have been much lower, while the resilience of the financial system would have been compromised. as mario draghi put it in 20168, " if we had not acted in recent years, the counterfactual would have been a disastrous deflation. " according to ecb estimations9 over a counterfactual exercise, inflation, in the absence of non - standard measures, would have been between 0. 3 and 0. 5 percentage points lower per year in the period 2015 - 2019, while real gdp would 2 / 8 bis - central bankers'speeches have been between 2. 5 and 3. 0 percentage points lower than the observed level in the end of 2019. all in all, the substantial easing in the ecb's monetary policy has significantly blunted the negative effects on the economy of a series of shocks. it has succeeded in escaping deflation, avoiding a recession and, at the same time, it has strengthened the functioning of the financial system. indeed, the euro area financial system has emerged much stronger than before the crisis. c. implications for the financial system in the euro area turning now to the impact of the low interest rate environment on the financial system, allow me to highlight some pertinent aspects : a very important contribution of monetary policy measures, including low interest rates during the past years, has been the safeguarding of macroeconomic stability. a stable economic environment is key for the smooth functioning of the financial system. furthermore, easing measures succeeded in strengthening the bank lending channel and mitigating impairments in the monetary policy transmission mechanism, containing the refinancing risk and debt servicing costs of nonfinancial corporates and households

positions within a 60 - day period after being notified by the authorities to do so. the rule was only introduced earlier this year but it will be worth considering a similar approach in the uk. finally, there is a large missing piece to what i have said about the resolution regime, namely how it would deal with banks that operate with branches or subsidiaries in other countries, and likewise how foreign banks operating in the uk would be sorted out. there is now a great deal of attention on this issue, in the g20, in the eu and via the fsb working group on cross - border crisis management chaired by paul tucker, and rightly so. i think it is fair to say that the regimes in the us, canada, japan and the uk come closest at present to meeting a kite - mark standard, but more needs to be done in continental europe. i therefore support the recent european commission consultation calling for eu countries to adopt resolution regimes. also, i think that we are much more likely to make progress in this field by agreeing on how national regimes can fit together to deal with international banks, rather than trying to devise an international resolution regime. the key issue then is burden - sharing, and that together the national regimes provide for equitable treatment of creditors whatever their domicile. a robust set of resolution regimes should not allow for bias in favour of domestic creditors. the uk, i should stress, is not one of those countries, but we are keen to work to produce a framework of resolution regimes that allows bias in favour of domestic creditors to end. thank you for listening to an account of the uk resolution regime. it is an important development as part of making our banks more robust to failure. it sits alongside enhanced regulation and supervision, and whatever structural changes may take place in the industry. but it remains work in progress, and in an important respect always will be because it needs to be ready to respond to threats that will evolve as well. and, finally, i should tell you my motto as head of the resolution unit, namely that i am happiest when we don ’ t need to perform a resolution.