christian noyer : financial regulation - stability versus uniformity, a focus on non - bank actors speech by mr christian noyer, governor of the bank of france and chairman of the board of directors of the bank for international settlements and president of the acpr ( autorite de controle prudentiel et de resolution / french prudential supervisory authority ), at the acprbank of france conference “ financial regulation - stability versus uniformity, a focus on non banks actors ”, paris, 28 september 2015. * * * ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure for me to introduce this conference on a particularly topical issue : “ financial regulation - stability versus uniformity, a focus on non - banks actors ”. the title of the conference invites all the participants to reflect on the puzzle policy makers are facing these days : – on the one hand preventing regulatory arbitrage and ensuring a consistent approach to financial regulation between sectors – and on the other hand taking into account the idiosyncratic business models and risks of each actor or sector of the financial system. to explore further this question, i would like first to thank professor jean tirole, the 2014 nobel memorial prize in economic sciences who will deliver the keynote address today. i am also honored to welcome the distinguished speakers, academics, policy makers, industry representatives who agreed to share with us their views on how best to regulate non - banks actors. other the past few years, the banque de france has developed a close cooperation with jean and his colleagues from the toulouse school of economics. this partnership is taking various forms, among which, for instance, the organization of several joint conferences on liquidity or on the future of regulation or on public debt and which materialized as special issues of our financial stability review. jean has also developed his thinking about macroprudential policy and strategic interactions. this is at the heart of today ’ s conference. non - banks actors are frequently referred to in the media as “ shadow banks ”. however, this does not mean that they are unregulated. insurance companies, sometimes included in the definition of “ shadow banking ”, are tightly regulated in france and supervised by the acpr while the amf supervises asset managers. regulating the shadow banking system has been and still is, as you know, a major objective for the g20 and the fsb since the 2008 financial crisis. the underlying objective was to prevent regulatory arbitrage and risk transfers outside the banking sector at a time

: its goal is to bring new practices and technologies into our activities, and to that end experiment where necessary within short and flexible cycles. to do so, it works in close collaboration with innovative firms. an example of this work is to use artificial intelligence to improve our scoring of businesses. scoring is something that banque de france has been doing for a very long time : its branch network all over france gives quotations of companies based on analysis of financial data but also on - site visits ( more than 250. 000 last year ). these quotations are then provided to banks and other institutions, in order to facilitate access to financing and therefore financial inclusion for many smes. this is why we are working, in collaboration with start - ups, on how to improve our data analysis and include learning algorithms in our scoring process. of course, this is not easy – the integration in existing processes is complex, in particular the role of expert judgment. and we are 3 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches also part of a larger experiment led by the french government called “ signaux faibles ” ( low signals ). it aims at bringing together data from various french public authorities and developing ai analysis capacity to identify businesses showing signs of vulnerability, in order to better target public support towards them. a second way is by revisiting some of our policies and adapting them. a good candidate could for instance be our policy to support fair access to payment instruments : banque de france is committed to ensure the availability in our jurisdiction of a range of payment instruments suited the needs of all users. the development of electronic payments based on innovative technologies lays the foundation for a smoother and safer payment experience. but this should not exclude part of the population. up to now, a large part of financial inclusion has also been about making access to cash easier for those who don ’ t have a credit or debit card, and ensuring the acceptance and availability of banknotes has therefore been an important dimension of our retail payment policy. but changes in payment solutions supply and changes in payment habits in favour of electronic payments may make this policy more difficult and costly to maintain going forward. one possibility often mentioned would be for the issuance of a central bank digital currency accessible to the general public. at this stage, in many developed economies and certainly in europe, the business case for this kind of innovation does not appear to me such that it should be a short - term priority. the priority should rather be to facilitate cross - border payments