the need to improve the quality of external audits of 4 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches banks. external auditors can contribute to financial stability by delivering quality bank audits, thereby increasing market confidence in banks ’ financial statements. quality bank audits are also a valuable input in the supervisory process as our recent experience with the asset quality review has demonstrated. we strongly believe that building effective relationships between prudential supervisors and external auditors, and between prudential supervisors and audit oversight bodies, can enhance banking supervision. it is also important to maintain effective communication between prudential supervisors and external auditors, as this provides significant insights and valuable market perspective. these are forms of cooperation we have repeatedly relied upon over the past few years for a number of issues and i must admit that they have enhanced our understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each institution we supervise. ladies and gentlemen, i believe that we have come a long way towards addressing a number of challenges and tasks. for us, the ultimate goal in meeting these challenges is to shape the banking system into a position where it can undertake effectively its main task, namely the financing of the real economy. let me conclude by saying that the improvement of the greek banking sector landscape, the restoration of confidence and the elimination of certain risk factors are positive elements that are expected to be a prime driver for growth of the greek economy. moreover, all the changes to the institutional framework that we just discussed are key to ensuring that the growth potential of the greek economy will be sustainable and will not be threatened by any form of structural weakness. 5 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches

referring to the difference between market and book value for bonds which are held to maturity. and we should look at how to address the issue that, in times of stress, banks may be hesitant to use instruments in the liquidity buffer that are not marked to market daily for accounting purposes. the turmoil last year also showed how important it is that banks are operationally prepared for liquidity stress. banks need credible and tested contingency funding plans and they must be operationally ready to access central bank liquidity facilities in times of stress. while this may be more of an issue in the us, we should also look at how this can be improved in the eu. then interest rate risk. when banks fail to cover this risk sufficiently, changes in market interest rates can lead to substantial losses and, in extreme cases, even to bank failure. the recent developments at regional banks in the us offer a vivid illustration of this. the events last year underline the importance of regulation for interest rate risk management and the need for prudent assumptions about customer behaviour. capital is also necessary to absorb the uncertainty of customer behaviour. in order to promote global harmonisation, we should explore the inclusion of interest rate risk in the pillar 1 requirements. and last but not least, we need to think about at1. rather than acting to stabilise a bank as a going concern in stress, international experience has shown that at1 absorbs losses only at a very late stage of a bank failure. we saw this in the case of credit suisse in 2023, with the swiss national bank noting that'the at1 features designed for early loss absorption in a going concern were not effective '. in this instance, at1 only absorbed losses when the point of non - viability was imminent and failed to stabilise the entity at an earlier stage of stress. this should encourage regulators to reflect on the role and functioning of at1 instruments in determining the capital position of banks. these are all important things that we have to look into. but first and foremost we have to implement basel iii. and while i know this is primarily a message to regulators and 3 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches lawmakers, it is also a message to you. because what a strong signal it would be if you as a group would say : don't water down basel iii. don't give us weak rules, give us strong rules. strong rules that apply to all banks wherever they are and whatever their size