news conference berne, 12 december 2019 fritz zurbrugg introductory remarks by fritz zurbrugg in my remarks today, i will begin with the current assessment of the situation at the big banks and domestically focused banks. i will then go on to discuss the significance of climate change for financial stability. the final part of my speech will focus on the issuance of the new banknote series, which was completed in september. big banks i will start with the situation at the big banks. both credit suisse and ubs have made significant progress since the ‘ too big to fail ’ regulations were introduced almost ten years ago. they have strengthened their capital bases, reduced their risk positions and implemented key organisational measures as regards crisis management.. with respect to resilience, credit suisse and ubs have already achieved their targets. both banks have increased their regulatory capital to the target levels and thus meet all final requirements on a consolidated basis. compliance with the requirements of the ‘ too big to fail ’ regulations is necessary to ensure adequate resilience of the two swiss big banks. this is confirmed by our loss potential analyses of both banks as well as historical loss experience during the last financial crisis. with respect to resolution, the statutory deadline for finalising the swiss emergency plans is the end of this year. in their plans, credit suisse and ubs have to demonstrate that they would be able to maintain their systemically important functions without interruption in a crisis. finma, as the competent authority, is currently checking whether the submitted plans meet this requirement. as for the overall assessment of the ‘ too big to fail ’ regulations, the snb shares the federal council ’ s view that the swiss regulatory approach is consistent with international page 1 / 4 berne, 12 december 2019 fritz zurbrugg news conference developments and that no fundamental change to this approach is necessary. 1 at the same time, the snb also shares the view that there is a need for selective adjustments. this applies in particular to funding in resolution, which is aimed at ensuring that the big banks have sufficient liquidity reserves in a crisis. to this end, together with finma and the snb, the federal department of finance is reviewing whether current liquidity requirements for the two big banks are sufficient to cover estimated funding needs in the event of a crisis, or whether regulatory adjustments are necessary. domestically focused banks i shall now turn to the domestically focused banks. there has been little change in their situation since the financial

thomas jordan : bank regulation – what went wrong? what will improve? summary of a speech by mr thomas jordan, vice - chairman of the governing board of the swiss national bank, at the forum fur universitat und gesellschaft, berne, 24 march 2010. the complete speech can be found in german on the swiss national bank ’ s website ( www. snb. ch ). * * * the financial crisis has caused enormous damage. massive losses were recorded in the global banking system. many countries have gone through the worst recession since the second world war. government rescue measures had to be implemented to stabilise the financial system. existing bank regulations were not able to prevent the crisis, nor were they able to at least contain the damage to such an extent that government rescue packages would not have become necessary. while before the financial crisis, there was considerable uncertainty about possible shortcomings in bank regulation, these have now become apparent and will have to be tackled. in addition, the provision of implicit state guarantees has made the need for action even more urgent. big banks – believing that they will receive government assistance if they run into problems – have even stronger incentives now to take on excessive risk. this increases the risk of another crisis and erodes the fundamental principle of the market economy – competition. once again, in the future, banks will have to bear their own risks. the failure of a bank should no longer jeopardise the stability of our financial system. only then, will our financial system become less prone to risk and will the extent of future crises clearly decrease. in order to achieve this goal, several measures have been decided on in switzerland. first, new capital adequacy requirements were enacted in 2008. big banks will have to double their risk - weighted capital. in addition, they will have to hold a minimum amount of equity capital, irrespective of the risk models they use internally. this is because the crisis has shown that internal risk models massively underestimated the risks taken. second, new liquidity regulations will be adopted. in the future, big banks will have to hold a sufficient amount of high - quality liquid funds to be able to cover unexpected liquidity losses for a period of at least 30 days. the reason for this is that, in the financial crisis, even solvent banks had liquidity problems. finally, measures to solve the “ too big to fail ” issue must be put into practice. no bank should be so systemically