presentation of the 2018 annual report of the autorite de controle prudentiel et de resolution ( acpr ) press conference of 28 may 2019 speech by francois villeroy de galhau, governor of the banque de france, chairman of the acpr press contact : mark deen ( mark. deen @ banque - france. fr ). page 1 of 5 ladies and gentlemen, [ slide 1 ] i am pleased to welcome you to the presentation of the 2018 annual report of the autorite de controle prudentiel et de resolution ( acpr ), alongside bernard delas, vicechairman of the acpr, remi bouchez, president of the sanctions committee, and edouard fernandez - bollo, secretary general of the acpr. in 2018, the women and men of the acpr continued to work tirelessly to safeguard financial stability, in a context marked by the uncertainty – and at times the emergency – of brexit. i would like to thank them for their work. this morning, i shall focus on a topical issue – the profitability of banks and insurers in france and europe [ slide 2 ]. * * i. the profitability of french banks and insurers remains resilient the return on equity of france ’ s largest banks edged up by 0. 4 percentage points to 6. 7 % in 2018, i coming back in line with 2015 ’ s level. the maintenance of profitability levels needs to be viewed alongside the sharp rise in bank capital. french banks have strengthened their solvency and are now more robust. they have more than tripled their capital since the crisis. in parallel, they have raised their core capital ratios ( cet1 ) by nearly 8 percentage points since 2008, from an average of 5. 8 % to 13. 6 % in 2018 [ slide 3 ]. french banks ’ profitability is in line with the euro area average and well above that of their german counterparts. at an international level, only the us banks stand out as having an roe in excess of 10 %. french banks have come a long way in the past ten years, in a demanding economic, financial and regulatory environment. we need to be wary, therefore, about using two misleading points of reference, the first of which consists in comparing current roes to precrisis levels – when they were clearly too high – and the second in focusing on the cost of equity. apparently, the cost of equity

pin has proved to be instrumental in reducing card fraud in the uk high street. the increase in card fraud losses in 2008 in uk was due, according to her, to uk card details being stolen and cloned for use in countries not yet upgraded to chip and pin. this brief overview gives you an indication of where we actually stand. i now return to the theme i want to address you today, the responsibilities of the central bank, financial institutions and consumers in fraud prevention. the bank of mauritius has a critical role to play in creating an environment where adequate standards are maintained. it establishes mr charles niehaus is the general manager, sub - saharan africa, visa international cemea region. expectations, norms and responsibilities through regulation. financial institutions on their part need to have adequate it systems and controls to address the risks in their businesses. they also need to provide access to relevant information to consumers of their financial products. informed consumers have the responsibility to protect themselves from the risks that they can best manage. bank of mauritius the bank of mauritius has the responsibility of maintaining the stability of the payments and financial system. this responsibility hinges on the orderly development and efficient functioning of the system. the bank has taken a number of initiatives to further modernize the payments system among which are the cheque truncation project, the implementation of the international bank identification number ( iban ) and the upgrading of the macss. the main objective of cheque truncation is to enable cheques to be exchanged and cleared on the basis of electronic presentment of cheque images and cheque micr codeline data. it provides a number of benefits : faster clearing cycles, faster cheque tracing and cost reduction, the most important one being operational risk reduction through enhanced security and automatic detection of forged instruments. our banks are increasingly engaging in cross border transactions and the bank of mauritius implemented the iban, which provides a secured and transparent means of international fund transfer via straight through processing ( stp ). with a view to furthering facilitation of cross border transactions in the region, the bank will be a participant and the settlement bank in the regional payment and settlement system ( repss ) of the comesa clearing house. the macss represents the main architecture for local electronic payments involving the bank of mauritius, banks, government and large taxpayers. this core application, which is based on international best practice, was recently replaced. it provides for advanced queue management for liquidity purposes, enhanced security, increased availability and