and the ratings agencies seem to lie behind a perpetual question mark about australia and its financial institutions. it is unlikely we will ever be able to change definitively the views of all the sceptics. and – let us be clear – we should welcome the sceptics. perhaps some of their concerns are valid. the reserve bank gives a lot of thought to these issues ; we certainly do not dismiss them. we should always be wary of the conventional wisdom being too easily accepted. we should never, ever, assume that “ it couldn ’ t happen here ”. it is in that vein that i wish to pose a set of questions that are thrown up by these sceptical views. in particular : how much of the recent relatively good performance was due to luck? to what extent did we improve our luck by sensible policies, across a range of economic and financial fronts? are there signs of any of the things going wrong that people typically worry about? bis central bankers ’ speeches and if there are, or were to be, such signs, could we do anything about it? to begin, i shall re - state some key metrics. graph 1 graph 2 bis central bankers ’ speeches graph 3 these charts really require no exposition ( graph 1, 2 and 3 ). the message is clear. it is fair to conclude that, given the circumstances internationally, the australian economy has exhibited more than acceptable performance over recent years. this conclusion would stand whether comparisons were made either against most other countries, or against our own historical experience. why was it that australia did not have a deep downturn in 2009 when so many other countries did? and why was it that we have returned to reasonable growth, when others have struggled to do so? this question has been answered on numerous occasions. there are several elements. first, the australian banking system went into the crisis in reasonable shape. to be sure, there were some poor lending decisions during the preceding period of easy credit and there was, in hindsight, too much reliance on wholesale funding. but among major institutions, credit quality issues have turned out to be manageable. asset quality was not as good among some of the regional banks, and even less so among some foreign banks operating in australia, but the problems have not been insurmountable. some observers might counter that the banks received assistance with wholesale fund raising in the form of the government guarantee. but the banks paid for that, and it was an appropriate response at a time of massive market di

to enhance end - user services and system performances. at the european level, we have welcomed and are supporting the proposed markets in crypto - assets ( mica ) regulation and the digital operational resilience act ( dora ), presented in september 2020 : with the publication of the mica proposal, the european union was the first g20 jurisdiction to respond to the urgent need to regulate the crypto - asset market. we also support the digital operational resilience act ( dora ). the text will create a harmonised framework for strengthening the it security of the overall financial sector. i ’ m thinking in particular of cloud players, whose role in critical segments of the sector raises the question of whether they should be located in the european union. i am hopeful that european negotiations will soon come to a conclusion on both these texts, which are crucial for regulating the financial sector. on the regulatory front, i would also like to stress the importance of the pilot regime that is to be introduced to help market infrastructure players experiment with dlt. this regime will allow multilateral trading platforms and securities settlement systems operated by csds to request temporary exemptions from existing regulations, in order to test certain dlt uses securely and with supervisory oversight. 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches but in order to be efficient, regulations need to be backed up by close international coordination. this is also a priority for us, to limit regulatory arbitrage or indeed avoid it altogether. for this reason, we are closely involved in the work of multilateral fora ( g7, g20, fsb, cpmi ), especially on crypto - assets and the improvement of cross - border payments. b ) however, adapting the regulatory framework does not, on its own, respond to all the challenges posed by financial digitalisation. we firmly believe, at the banque de france, that to help meet these challenges, we also need to play an active role in innovation. for us, becoming part of the european innovation ecosystem means, first and foremost, committing to helping initiatives that can create a diverse and competitive market for efficient solutions, tailored to user needs. our institutions – such as the banque de france ’ s lab, its infrastructure, innovation and payments directorate ( diip ), the acpr ’ s fintech - innovation unit, with its acpr - amf fintech forum – are fully mobilised to facilitate these initiatives and help them grow. among these initiatives, three in particular are worth highlighting