refer to. further, the climate of uncertainty which took hold on international financial markets and the subsequent fall - off in financing flows had a more marked impact on those economies, such as spain, which are more reliant on external saving. nor can we forget that the 2009 recession also disclosed a series of weaknesses in the institutional arrangements for the euro. membership of the economic and monetary union provides for extra stability and resilience. unsurprisingly, then, at the height of the crisis when the very survival of the monetary union and the euro were in doubt, the wave of mistrust affected us most forcefully. that said, strictly domestic factors played a substantial role in the source and development of the crisis in our economy. this was because unsustainable imbalances built up, even in the absence of an international crisis, and our vulnerability to external shocks thereby increased. bis central bankers ’ speeches i shall now briefly review some of these imbalances. during the prolonged expansionary phase before the crisis broke, heavy losses in competitiveness built up as a result of the growing divergence of our prices and costs relative to those of the euro area countries, with which the exchange rate had been set at the onset of monetary union. this was the outcome of the continuous pressure exerted by domestic spending on plant capacity, driven by very loose financial conditions, whose expansionary effects were not countered by a more restrictive economic policy stance, most specifically in respect of budgetary policy or supply - side policies. the financial counterpart of this excess spending was the accumulation by spanish households and firms of excessive debt. this over - indebtedness was moreover accompanied by a strong bias towards the construction and real estate development sector and, inevitably in an economy as strongly banked as spain, this also led to excessive growth in bank lending and excesses in banks ’ risk concentration. the relative ease with which these debts built up and their subsequent effects on activity, employment and financial stability were not, in any event, an exclusively spanish phenomenon. indeed, these and other similar developments have given rise to widespread initiatives at the international level to strengthen the economic policy tool box, with a new instrument – namely macroprudential supervision – being incorporated to head off this type of situation. in any event, the losses in competitiveness and excessive debt led to a large - scale imbalance in our foreign trade, resulting in a deficit of 10 % of gdp in 2007 and requiring the resort to large volumes of external

. the development of these new services will require adjustment of the regulatory perimeter. thus, for example, the new payment services directive already covers new services not previously regulated, such as payment initiation and account aggregation. another case is that of crowdfunding platforms, which seek to put lenders and borrowers directly in touch with each other, without the need for banks – the traditional intermediaries. the development of these services and their resilience in situations of stress might require further adjustments to current regulations. 3. third, it is important that the price of services charged to the customer reflects their cost. currently, a large part of the technological improvements offered do not seem to have an additional cost for the user. for example, immediate access to data through mobile devices, automatic repetition of consultations every few seconds, or the dispatch of instructions or data requests en masse, are offered without any apparent cost to the customer. however, the new services do have costs and these must be clearly and transparently passed on to customers. 4. finally, it should not be forgotten that the benefits promised by new technologies are neither cost - free nor risk - free. there may be costs arising from investments in innovation that fail to bear fruit or from investments with payback cycles that end up being much longer than expected, as apparently may be the case, in principle, of some of the initiatives being developed in relation to distributed ledger technology. and risks relating, inter alia, to personal information privacy, fraud or cyber - attacks. in addition, the proliferation of new technologies may also lead to the financial exclusion of those users at a distance from them, who could be adversely affected if the continuity of service provision through traditional systems is not guaranteed. in short, we are facing great technological change in the banking industry, the effects of which are still not clear. the development of new services is a great opportunity for renewal for the more dynamic banks, as it may provide them with efficiency improvements and mean that they can offer greater services to their customers. and, improving customer service is precisely one of the main challenges facing the banking industry, which brings me to the final point of my address : the importance of maintaining the confidence of bank customers. 5 / 7 3 confidence confidence is the most important and the most fragile of a bank ’ s assets and determines the nature of its relationship with its customers, beyond the ambit of mere commercial transactions. bank customers deposit their savings with credit institutions, trusting that they will return