we also want to encourage greater specialisation and new techniques in the industry, for example by having specialised service providers to support the industry, and by facilitating access to a wider variety of risk and capital management tools for insurers. let me share with you some ideas and initiatives we have to help catalyse such developments. insurance expertise and capacity firstly, regarding insurance expertise. the industry needs to accelerate its efforts to provide more regional and international exposure, and advance training across a broad range of business lines, to raise the level of technical competency and experience of its staff. the industry should take advantage of mas'financial training scheme ( fts ) which provides co - funding for training. such efforts should not be focused only on developing the existing talent stock, but also cultivating the talent pipeline. the insurance industry faces strong competition for intellectual capital from other economic sectors. hence, you need to raise the profile of the career in the insurance industry collectively, to attract the best and the brightest. with the right human capital, the industry will be better placed to capitalise on asia's growth prospects. there is also a dearth of underwriting capacity in the region for some specialised risks, for example aviation, energy, political and terrorism risks, to name a few. mas will explore ideas to enhance our competitiveness to encourage such risks to be underwritten in singapore. we welcome feedback and suggestions. specialisation and new techniques we recognise the importance of ancillary service providers within the insurance ecosystem, and believe that increased usage of specialised service providers can make our insurers more competitive. singapore's existing infrastructure, political and economic environment is conducive for such service providers to thrive in, and we will enhance the business case with initiatives to help reduce the cost of operating in singapore. examples of specialised service providers include run - off management and related services, claims management and processing services, loss adjusting services and policy administration services, amongst others. another new technique that can enhance insurers'competitiveness is insurance - linked securitisation, or ils. ils enables insurers to transfer risks to the capital market to strengthen their balance sheets. these securities also contribute to a more diverse and vibrant capital market. the global ils market saw a record level of issuance in 2005, and 2006 looks set to exceed 2005. while there are few ils deals sponsored by asian insurers, we expect to see more interest as insurers become increasingly sophisticated and

of living is a value judgement, while the possible standard of living is a result of how well the economy works in terms of the potential for long - term growth, how sound public finances are and so on. another problem is that interest rates rocket when there is a lack of faith in the ability of the political sphere to take action, which further aggravates the problems. so, how can one overcome these difficulties? the key is that measures designed to put public finances on an even keel and improve competiveness are made credible and therefore implementable. in some cases, such as greece, stronger institutions are also needed to ensure that tax revenues are safeguarded in the future. the main responsibility for this of course lies with the politicians in the respective countries. in parallel with this long - term work, the support measures designed to resolve the acute difficulties need to continue. hopefully this will help us to reduce the widespread financial unease. all in all, however, it will still take time to resolve the debt crisis in europe. slow growth in the euro area, but no recession real fiscal - policy improvements are thus required in several of the euro countries in the period ahead in order to stabilise sovereign debts. we therefore expect growth to be weak in the euro countries over the next few years, although the picture varies from country to country. germany is a locomotive for growth in the euro area. it is important to remember that the euro area is still managing to get along, even though growth in the area as a whole is not so strong ( see figure 8 ). the united states – weak recovery with bright spots the situation in the united states is, like that in ireland, the result of an overheated housing market and dramatic falls in housing prices in combination with structural problems. the us bis central bankers ’ speeches economy was in many senses the epicentre of the financial crisis. there are a number of problems that need to be dealt with. first, many households in the united states have fallen into difficulties because their debts exceed the value of their homes. the households have therefore needed to increase their saving, which they have done. as a result, private consumption has grown slowly for some time but does have the potential to recover in the period ahead. second, public finances are weak in the united states too ( see figure 9 ). the situation became more dramatic in the summer when the country ’ s credit rating was reduced. the political deadlock in the us congress was one of