relationship management, transaction banking, specialised finance or product structuring. it also enables financial institutions to manage bis central bankers ’ speeches their risks well, and operate effectively in asia ’ s still diverse regulatory frameworks and market environments. ( iv ) technological skills and adaptability fourth, technological adaptability. i spoke earlier about how technology is changing the business, and changing jobs. it is not a matter of defending ourselves against the onslaught of technology, but taking advantage of it. financial institutions are increasingly using technology to gain an edge over their competitors, or to achieve cost efficiencies and free up resources for new growth areas. in consumer banking, we are now seeing new mobile payment products that enable on - the - go transactions. in private banking, banks are putting more investment tools at the disposal of their clients. for corporates, banks are using technology to facilitate end - to - end supply chain financing. and needless to say, cyber security is now a key risk, everywhere in the world. across the business, from management to individual business units, technology skills and adaptability must be a strategic imperative. initiatives to facilitate the building of competencies ibf has a key role in ensuring that finance professionals are able to keep pace with these challenges of the future. ibf has been undertaking the strategic role of a standard - setting body for financial sector competencies since 2001. when we went on to launch the financial industry competency standards or fics in 2005, ibf took on the role as the national accreditation and certification agency for the fics framework. the fics cannot be a static set of competency standards. it must evolve, to cater to new business opportunities and new regulations, and to encourage individuals to build up expertise continually. we are thus unveiling today the “ ibf standards ”, which provide practice - oriented development roadmaps for all our financial sector practitioners. the ibf standards which will merge ibf ’ s current offering of industry examinations and industry standards offered under fics, into an integrated and seamless set of competency standards. they will provide clear pathways on how a practitioner can undergo accredited programmes to progress him or her from the first licensing examination through to foundational skills and subsequently, advanced - level specialist training. ibf consulted the industry actively in the last year to ensure that the ibf standards meet the demands of finance professionals of tomorrow. for instance, in risk management, the standards will now encourage individuals to acquire deeper knowledge of the underlying

from this crisis period. and thirdly what we have seen is that the so called developing economies in a curious twist of their economy fate, actually became the biggest creditors in the world and the so called rich countries, the developed countries, were actually the biggest debtors. so you ’ ve turned the world upside down topsy - turvy and today we are seeing india along with other big emerging markets who are effectively lending money to the united states of america by buying their treasuries and funding their development. so these three stands i think have to be taken into account because they are really new elements of the international financial architecture which have a bearing on how the global economy is going to perform. so what do we see today in the global economy that is different apart from what i just mentioned. first of all you have a liquidity trap. keynes ’ s classic liquidity trap is alive and kicking around us. whatever you do with interest rates it doesn ’ t care at all for production or for consumption because we have too much liquidity, the 8 trillion that i talked about. in that context how do governments stimulate their economies given that monetary policy has done the heavy lifting, it created this excess liquidity but now going forward there is a need for a new element, the xfactor, which has to then propel the growth forward. you have very influential commentators like larry summers of united states who is calling for another round of quantitative easing in the us because he feels that the long term growth path of the united states economy is still not well embedded and the reason for that is partly due to the demographics. you have ageing populations in japan, europe and united states, which bis central bankers ’ speeches means that this baby boom generation, the people who were born just after the second world war were now starting to retire are consuming less and saving more and as a consequence you probably don ’ t have that space for a consumption led economic impetus that developing countries such as ourselves dependent on for the last 30 or 40 years to grow our economies through an export - led strategy. so my first question is ; is that export - led strategy relevant any more given these demographic changes that we see in the advanced economies? and secondly given the fact that the advanced economies are in debt – what happened in the great recession was they nationalized private bad debts in their housing sectors, nationalized it, bought it into the government ’ s balance sheet and as a consequence that the western economies are effectively net