case of sme bis central bankers ’ speeches borrowers are far lesser than that in case of other larger borrowers. hence, there is a strong case for providing greater credit to this business segment. here, i see a significant role for the cics in building an information base on smes and assisting banks in their credit decision making. i would urge the cics to take urgent steps to bridge this information void and help facilitate flow of credit to smes, which would provide an impetus to the overall economic growth environment. identity fraud – an emerging threat and role of the cics in combating it according to the norton cybercrime report 2011 more than two thirds of online adults ( 69 percent ) have been a victim of cybercrime in their lifetime, and every second 14 adults become a victim of cybercrime, resulting in more than one million cybercrime victims every day. the situation is equally alarming in india. fraud, especially in the banking domain, assumes great significance due to the associated reputational and monetary losses. incidence of frauds can severely dent the confidence in the financial system, particularly at a time when we are trying to use technology as the medium to bring more and more of the excluded masses into the formal financial system. fraudsters employ innovative ways of impersonating others using altered kyc documents. they also apply for credit at multiple banks at the same time by exploiting vulnerabilities in banks ’ systems and processes. alternately, fraudsters can also apply for credit from the same bank at multiple locations assuming different identities. while guidelines around kyc norms have been strengthened and the banks are being encouraged to provide unique customer ids at the institutional level, the credit bureaus have capabilities to play an important role in preventing such frauds by providing a holistic view of the individual and highlighting the different variations of id information, as provided to different credit providers. also, data sharing mechanism amongst banks can help in identifying serial fraudsters by picking up inter - temporal and inter - bank inconsistencies of application data to provide an early warning mechanism to identify potential risk cases. further, in a robust kyc system, banks could consider using multi - database checks on an individual ’ s identity at the time of underwriting that encompasses different identifier databases like uid, pan, voter id, passport, etc. this will help in rooting out many cases of identity frauds through fraudulent documentation. from a consumer ’ s perspective, cics hold

when the federal funds rate was comparatively high. the subsequent surge in capital flows in 2009, as the crisis was abating, largely reflects a rebound from the capital flow interruption during the crisis itself, though highly accommodative monetary policies in advanced economies doubtless also played a role. moreover, capital flows to emes started to ease after 2011, a period when the federal reserve continued to add accommodation and reduce yields through increases in its balance sheet, as shown in the right panel. and, more recently, capital flows to emes have picked up again despite the fact that the fed has been removing accommodation since 2015. if u. s. monetary policy is not the major determinant, what other factors have been driving eme capital flows? one prominent factor has been growth differentials between emes and advanced economies. in figure 5, the left panel shows that capital inflows to emes picked up post - crisis, in line with the widening of this growth differential, while the slowdown in inflows after 2011 coincides with its narrowing. another related determinant has been commodity prices, as shown in the right panel. the pickup in both global growth and commodity prices over the past couple of years explains a good part of the recent recovery of capital flows to emes. 5 see, for example, wheatley and garnham ( 2010 ) and rajan ( 2014 ). studies looking at the determinants of eme capital flows include chari and others ( 2017 ), clark and others ( 2016 ), bems and others ( 2016 ), koepke ( 2015 ), ahmed and zlate ( 2014 ), fratzscher ( 2012 ), and - 4monetary stimulus by the fed and other advanced - economy central banks played a relatively limited role in the surge of capital flows to emes in recent years. there is good reason to think that the normalization of monetary policies in advanced economies should continue to prove manageable for emes. fed policy normalization has proceeded without disruption to financial markets, and market participants ’ expectations for policy ( the red symbols in figure 6 ) seem reasonably well aligned with policymakers ’ expectations in the summary of economic projections ( the black dots ), suggesting that markets should not be surprised by our actions if the economy evolves in line with expectations. it also bears emphasizing that the emes themselves have made considerable progress in reducing vulnerabilities since the crisis - prone 1980s and 1990s. many