example, what are our supervisory expectations regarding banks ’ liquidity risk management? what contingency planning do we expect from banks for outsourced services? to answer these questions, we will establish common administrative practices via the already described process of collecting national and international best administrative practices, of benchmarking concepts and by taking into account the lessons learnt from the crisis. second, we need to further refine our benchmarking by using the knowledge we gained last year. last year, we had to be tough on banks and on us to collect a lot of harmonised quantitative as well as qualitative information. this was necessary to lay the foundation for our work and to exploit that we are one of the biggest supervisors of the world. we are exceptionally well placed to look for the best practices and to identify emerging risks by using our unique database. good benchmarking combines strong analysis and data - driven assessment with expert judgement. it allows taking into account the specificities of individual banks while still fostering consistency of assessments across banks and countries. good benchmarking looks at risks from multiple perspectives and helps to develop a deep, holistic understanding of each institution ’ s overall risk profile and viability. third, we need to further analyse in detail and for each topic individually where we are able to create a harmonized approach within the ssm, where we are able to remove uneven playing fields. we already did so for the options and national discretion. in november we will consult on the legal text we drafted for executing the discretion given to us regarding the 122 ond identified and decided upon by the sb. apart from the famous onds, the current legal environment in which we operate is characterised by many different interpretations and national gold plating. in this bis central bankers ’ speeches context, we face a particular challenge. it goes without saying that the ssm applies national law ; consequently, the ssm is not always able to ensure a level playing field when national laws diverge. things get even more difficult when national supervisory practices are transferred into national law limiting the usual range of discretion needed by a supervisor to correctly do his job. these new national rules risk not removing but creating new elements of fragmentation and supervisory arbitrage. conclusions let me conclude by recalling a key lesson from the recent financial crises. the crises did not solely result from weaknesses in the regulatory framework. it is important to remember that the supervision of banks did not function optimally, either. we can all agree that banks should

sabine lautenschlager : one year of ssm speech by ms sabine lautenschlager, member of the executive board of the european central bank, at an international conference on “ one year of ssm effective and efficient supervision in a volatile world? ”, organised by the institute of law and finance, frankfurt am main, 2 november 2015. * * * ladies and gentlemen, let me thank the organisers of this conference, and especially professor schneider, for their kind invitation. i very much welcome this opportunity to share our experience of one year single supervisory mechanism, in particular as our first year anniversary is only two days ahead of us. back in november 2014, in a speech for the start of the single supervisory mechanism ( ssm ), i compared the new system, the ssm, to an athlete at the start of his career. we only had a short period of training before going into our first competition. today, almost one year later, we have gained experience and won some contests. let me mention some figures to give you some insight into the sport we practice : the ssm directly supervises 122 banking groups. from january 2016 onwards this number will increase to 130. the balance sheets of these banks count for 25 trillion euro in assets and 82 % of the banking business done in the euro area. overall, the ecb issued more than 1. 200 supervisory decisions last year ; our planning cycle for the first year included more than 8. 000 activities. not only did we hire 1. 000 new staff members at the ecb, but we also integrated 5. 000 staff members from 26 national supervisory authorities, who were formerly responsible for supervision in their home country, into the ssm. since november 2014, the ssm is responsible for directly supervising 1200 individual banks, which until that point in time had been supervised according to 19 national interpretations of european law and according to specific national regulations, following a national supervisory tradition with varying degrees of quantitative and qualitative elements, with a historically grown reporting universe. it was a busy first year. and it was a successful first year as we made progress on many fronts. we achieved a lot regarding our main objective : we improved the resilience of 122 significant banking groups, of the 19 national banking systems, and of the european banking system as whole. the comprehensive assessment was the most publicly visible success, but many smaller and less visible steps followed and will still follow on our way to a safer and more sound banking system in