, including central bank term funding ; and measures to conserve capital, including strong recommendations that banks limit distributions such as dividends. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches and @ boe _ pressoffice in the uk, the monetary policy committee initially increased the stock of asset purchases by £200 billion to a total of £645 billion, and bought gilts at the fastest rate operationally possible. similar to other jurisdictions, the financial policy committee ( fpc ) and the prudential regulation authority ( pra ) also took steps to free up existing bank resources to enable banks to continue lending, by releasing the countercyclical buffer, freezing systemic buffer rates and by implementing an extension of the transition for new accounting provisions for expected loss to flow through to the capital framework. some reporting and disclosure requirements were extended, reducing the operational burden on banks ; and some market risk - based capital requirements that were deemed to have moved excessively during the episode were offset. 1 at the same time, fiscal authorities began to provide support to economies entering lockdown. in the uk, that included government guarantees for lending to the corporate sector as well as income support schemes for employees furloughed as businesses shut or scaled back their activities. the size of the policy response was huge. across the us, euro area, uk and japan, central bank assets increased by around $ 7 trillion in 2020, more than twice their increase in the year following the collapse of lehman brothers. and, according to the imf, by mid - march 2021, global pandemic - related fiscal support measures totalled $ 16 trillion ( around 19 % of world gdp ). 2 this is at least twice as large as the fiscal response observed during the global financial crisis. in 2020 alone, average overall fiscal deficits reached 11. 7 % of gdp for advanced economies, the largest measure the imf has recorded since they began gathering data. as a result of all of these interventions, conditions stabilised. there was no credit crunch : credit provision to businesses increased by more than 10 % during 2020. indeed, due in part to capital conservation measures – and the extension of transitionals to recognise, for capital purposes, the new accounting framework for provisions – many banks ’ capital ratios improved during 2020. 3 the stress created by the pandemic is far from over and it is important that we only reflect on its full impact at that stage. there are various projects

instead a qualitative judgement about the credibility and feasibility of the different types of resources of a ccp to absorb loss and replenish its going concern requirements. ccps have different liability structures from banks and therefore the assessment of the absorbency of these structures and the appropriateness of additional forms of lac is more likely to be different from banks than it is to be the same. that assessment of lac will need to consider the extent to which unfunded commitments from members can be relied upon given the procyclicality of calling for them in stressed circumstances. it means assessing the credibility of allocating losses via cash calls or variation margin haircutting and the incentives that this generates in clearing members and clients to continue to clear through the ccp. and it also means looking not just at loss absorbency for clearing member default but also at the ccp ’ s capacity to absorb losses and recapitalise where a loss springs from operational or other losses not covered in full by loss allocation arrangements with its members. point of entry to resolution one issue that is necessarily intertwined with the question of resources is the point of entry into resolution. as i have described, resolution is a financial reconstruction. for it to be effective it cannot be exercised only once the financial resources in a firm have already been exhausted. if it is decided that the resources available for resolution lie principally within the existing waterfall, that would further suggest that resolution authorities must have the ability to intervene and to take action before the end of the waterfall. but where does that boundary lie? the uk resolution regime sets the statutory definition for entry to resolution as being the point where the ccp is failing or likely to fail and there is no reasonable prospect of action being taken to restore it to viability. integral to this test is the principle that this is a forward - looking judgement, capable of being exercised flexibly at different points in a ccp ’ s distress and dependent on a multitude of factors that drive an eventual decision at the time. that can make it difficult to pin down a single universal trigger point but it is possible to identify some circumstances that could be indicative of this boundary being reached. those possible scenarios could include an assessment that the default management procedures of the ccp have failed, or are likely to fail, to both absorb losses fully and replenish the ccp ’ s resources in a sufficiently timely manner to allow the ccp to continue to operate. that failure might arise through legal challenge hindering the default management