thomas jordan : monetary policy in the financial markets crisis summary of a speech by mr thomas jordan, member of the governing board of the swiss national bank, at an event for banks and pension funds, berne, 2 april 2008. the complete speech can be found in german on the swiss national banka€™s website ( www. snb. ch ). * * * the origin of the turbulence on the international financial markets which has persisted since august 2007 is mainly to be found in the us housing market. on the one hand, a long period of low usd interest rates had boosted the demand for residential real estate in the us. on the other hand, the structure of the us mortgage market with the associated rapid increase in mortgage debtors with poor credit ratings, and the subsequent securitisation of their mortgages, had proved to be problematic. between 2001 and 2006, residential real estate prices in the us doubled. at the end of 2006, there was a reversal in the price trend which triggered crises in both the real estate and mortgage markets. the substantial expansion in sub - prime and alt - a mortgages, and a deterioration in the credit ratings of debtors within these segments, led to a rise in the level of overdue payments and defaults. as a result, even securities that gave the appearance of being gilt - edged, but were backed by us sub - prime mortgages, lost considerable ground. since the banks themselves have massive investments in this market, they were obliged to make writedowns which, in some cases, were hefty. there is still uncertainty about the volume of additional bank writedowns that will be needed, so that the situation on the international money markets remains tense. in this crisis, central banks have reacted fast and flexibly in order to secure the supply of liquidity to banks and counter distortions on the money market. by means of various measures, the swiss national bank was able to stabilise the three - month libor within the target range, thereby keeping fluctuations in the relative restrictiveness of monetary policy low by comparison with other countries. however, it is not possible to solve the fundamental problems in the banking sector through the flexible deployment of an expanded range of monetary policy instruments ; neither can they be resolved by means of coordinated actions on the part of central banks alone. the banks themselves must make a substantial contribution to solving the problems which triggered the current crisis. in this respect, the most urgent matters are transparency with regard

njuguna ndung ’ u : improving access to financial services in kenya address by prof njuguna ndung ’ u, governor of the central bank of kenya, at the launch of airtel money transfer service, nairobi, 10 august 2011. * * * hon. samuel poghisio, minister for information and communications ; dr. bitange ndemo, permanent secretary, ministry of information and communications ; mr. charles njoroge, director general, communications commission of kenya ; n. arjun, airtel chief projects and transformation officer, airtel africa ; rene meza, managing director, airtel kenya ; distinguished guests : ladies and gentlemen : it gives me great pleasure to be here this morning during this historic launch of airtel money transfer service brand into the kenyan financial sector following the successful application early this year by airtel to re - brand and re - launch the service and subsequent approval by the central bank of kenya. ladies and gentlemen : i am informed that the key objective of airtel money brand in line with this launch is twofold : first, to provide a convenient, affordable, and easily accessible money transfer service to kenyans of all walks of life and second, to provide the banked members of the society with a convenient way to access and transact funds held in their bank accounts. this objective is in tandem with the central bank policy on adoption of innovative technological platforms to scale up access to financial services. in fact, mobile phone financial services have in particular presented kenya with an opportunity to significantly upscale access to financial services cost effectively. it has also shown there is a market and everyone now wants a slice of it. ladies and gentlemen : the kenyan mobile phone financial services story has become a much acclaimed global case study. to date, over 17. 8 million kenyans transfer over ksh. 3. 1 billion to each other daily with over 1. 1 million transactions. in particular, and in terms of registered users and agents ’ base, i am informed that airtel controls 18 percent of the registered users and 25 percent of agents. further, i wish to commend airtel for planning to carry out an extensive awareness campaign immediately after this launch in order to stimulate the uptake of the service in addition to the recent extensive country wide agent recruitment exercise by the company. it is my firm belief that this will positively impact on the visibility of the airtel brand in the market. in fact, there are so many areas not yet fully covered out there