country. this raises the question, however, whether it is necessary for central banks to carry out all the activities that they perform. as i mentioned earlier, i believe that central banks should assess the scope of their operations on a regular basis. by focusing on core activities at sveriges riksbank, it has been possible to cut the number of employees from about 850 in 1995 to around 450 today. in addition, one could go on to compare the costs of certain activities. we per - form benchmarking in several areas, and i know that this is something that other central banks have been doing as well. one should also compare the costs of in - house operations with those of outsourcing. such comparisons have led us to outsource some activities, such as cleaning services and our staff restaurant. one potential problem when comparing activities separately is that it presupposes that objectives are not interrelated, and that there are no joint costs associ - ated with the different activities. recently, questions regarding the connection between price stability and financial stability have attracted increasing attention and have given rise to a debate on whether there may be situations where the two goals conflict with each other. in normal circumstances, however, we do not perceive any conflict among our objectives. when measuring costs, it is important not to count the costs of the central bank only, but also of other parties that are important to performance. for instance, in some countries the central bank is responsible for bank supervision, while in others this is the task of a special financial supervisory authority. countries also differ with respect to the private sector's involvement in fulfilling certain objectives. in some countries the private sector provides services that in other countries are provided by the central bank. here, i believe that more empirical work could be done. the bis has a natural role to play in this respect, and that was also the reason that i first contacted the bis when i got the idea for this workshop. i also believe that more comparisons could be made within the european system of central banks to help us all improve our efficiency levels. final remarks let me conclude by referring back to my opening remarks. questions of efficiency have been at the top of our agenda for a long period of time, and there are good reasons for central banks to pay extra attention to their costs. it is true that central banks provide public goods and that minimising costs is therefore not always the best solution. however, we should be aware that the pressure

speech date : 30 september 2021 speaker : martin floden venue : kommuninvest ( digitally ) sveriges riksbank se - 103 37 stockholm ( brunkebergstorg 11 ) tel + 46 8 787 00 00 fax + 46 8 21 05 31 registratorn @ riksbank. se www. riksbank. se swestr – a fully transaction - based reference rate * i would like to begin by thanking kommuninvest for the opportunity to participate in its finance forum. as usual, the finance forum offers a highly appreciated meeting place where representatives of both authorities and the private sector can have open and fruitful discussions on current financial market issues. thank you to kommuninvest for that! as mentioned in maria viimne ’ s presentation, i am going to talk today about the riksbank's new reference rate swestr. i will explain why the riksbank considers that financial market participants in sweden should now begin the transition from stibor, the traditional reference rate in swedish kronor, to the riksbank's transaction - based reference rate swestr. i will also describe how the riksbank intends to be active in and support this process. however, in order to provide some context, i will first briefly explain the importance of reference rates in the financial market. i will also provide some background to the interbank rates, such as stibor and libor, which have been dominant in the markets to date, and describe the problems with these reference rates. reference rates fulfil a useful function in society reference rates can be perceived as a rather technical issue and they are rarely at the centre of the daily economic debate. however, reference rates are used worldwide in a variety of contracts and concerning very large contract values. they therefore fulfil a central function in our financial markets. * i would like to thank ola medelberg for help in writing this speech, and ingrid wallin johansson, anders ryden, johannes forss sandahl and marianne sterner for valuable comments. 1 a reference rate works as a benchmark in the pricing of financial contracts. the main intention of such a benchmark is that pricing shall follow market developments, and that none of the contracting parties shall be able to manipulate it. i think that reference rates can be seen as a common tool that exists to facilitate for everyone who participates in or is affected by the