, to better diversify and manage economic risk. the securitisation of assets made it possible for financial institutions to sell loans within complex and opaque financial products and to take them off their balance sheets. these financial techniques weakened incentives for the prudent screening and monitoring of credit risk and led to banks loosening their lending standards. eventually, when the global financial system was thrown into crisis, many policy - makers were shocked to discover that they did not have the macroprudential tools to deal with part of the financial system spiralling out of control. up until then, the common view in policy circles had been that the whole financial system would be stable as long as its single parts were sound. the financial crisis painfully demonstrated how supervisory arrangements have not been sufficiently focused on ensuring the stability of the financial system as a whole. therefore, to be able to monitor, assess and mitigate systemic risk, policy - makers have been working on creating new tools for a new policy area, namely giving a macro - prudential orientation to financial regulation and supervision. the european systemic risk board ( esrb ) was established as the main body for macroprudential oversight and surveillance of eu financial markets. bis central bankers ’ speeches as you probably know, the european central bank ( ecb ) has close links with the esrb. these include, first, a personal link : the president of the ecb also serves as the chairperson of the esrb. second, the ecb provides logistical and administrative support by hosting the esrb secretariat. and lastly, the ecb provides analytical and statistical support, collecting and processing information that feed into the esrb ’ s discussions. despite this, however, the esrb remains a body that is quite distinct and separate from the ecb. the esrb does not change in any way the functioning of the ecb ’ s statutory role and its unambiguous primary mandate for delivering price stability. the new institutional set - up, and the ecb ’ s role in it, rests on solid institutional and legal foundations. the ecb has participated closely and constructively in the legislative process leading to the establishment of the esrb. it has thus focused on establishing in europe the most effective and robust macro - prudential supervision set - up possible to prevent and mitigate systemic risk. the question remains, however, as to whether, within this new macro - prudential framework, there might not be some tension between inter - connectedness born out of

##a products should be complemented with value - added services allowing customers to make payments, fast, easy and secure and, most importantly, as much as possible paper - free. i am here talking about initiation and confirmation services. combining these services with the sepa payments will make the payment process fully electronic. end - users will spend less time on payments – and less time also means less money! we refer to this perspective as the next stage of the sepa project : esepa. esepa promises significant financial benefits for banks and customers via : • cost savings • added revenue • customer retention through value - added differentiation. let me quickly run through three examples : 1. sepa online payments the european payments council ( epc ) has worked on a project that enables online merchants to offer their customers a convenient, well - know payment solution. it could become one of the convincing responses of the european banking industry to the competitive challenge posed by paypal and similar new types of payment service providers. i would explicitly like to encourage the banking industry, and especially the epc, to step up the work on the new payment methods. 2. mobile payments this is a market segment where the development in europe is still in its infancy – although high expectations had been raised a few years ago. on a global level, m - payment initiatives have now gained strong new momentum. the gsm association has announced the next steps of its pay - buy - mobile initiative. this initiative builds on the infrastructure of the major credit card companies and aims at enabling global interoperability between contactless chip cards and point of sale terminals. at the same time the epc is looking for viable models of m - payment solutions for the sepa market. potential benefits could be for example an even higher level of payment convenience, speed and security experienced by the users. these types of benefits are the reason why i think that the epc ’ s official dialogue with the mobile industry should start soon, to define viable cooperative models and standards for this area. 3. e - invoicing i mention e - invoicing in the context of esepa because it offers a vast potential of benefits to users and providers alike. for the private consumers, the most significant advantage may be convenience : just imagine that you receive your invoices electronically and can directly initiate their payments with one tick or click. this is already reality in some countries, but should become available across sepa. even more benefits are possible for corporates,