we took our mandates, assessed the system accordingly, and set in train a series of unprecedented changes to deliver financial stability. key to this effort was more effective co - ordination between national regulators and co - operation through international bodies. for banks, this was the right response to the financial crisis, which showed that the standards we had been using were woefully inadequate. the toolkit we have today is miles ahead of what the authorities had as queues grew outside northern rock branches – for example the uk has led the way in developing a resolution regime so that we can intervene to manage the orderly failure of a firm. at the same time, uk banks have increased their equity capital by approximately £130bn since the end of 2008 and now hold more than £600bn of high - quality liquid assets, four times the level they held before the financial crisis. governments, regulators and firms together have transformed the banking system. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / pages / speeches / default. aspx insurers – with one spectacular exception, aig – generally fared relatively well during the crisis. uk insurers ’ balance sheets were in general more robust, and they did not hold many of the same assets that proved so toxic for our banks. capital resources within the insurance sector did take a hit, but not a fatal one, though of course they benefited from the bail - outs of the banks. but a revolution was a necessary step to achieve greater consistency in insurance regulation across europe. the uk had already laid the ground for a market - consistent capital regime, through icas. but despite this, as the industry knows all too well, the introduction of solvency ii ended up being a rather long and exhausting revolution. there are some bugs we need to iron out ( on which i will say more later ), but the core elements of the regime are sensible and we will continue to work with the industry to make a success of it. moreover, across both banking and insurance we now have a robust accountability framework for senior managers, reduced scope for dangerous pay structures, and more effective board governance. in no small part this is thanks to the pioneering work of the parliamentary commission on banking standards, leading to the introduction this year of the senior managers and certification regimes. the revolution is over stepping back, where are we in the course of this revolution? it is sometimes claimed that we regulators are hell - bent on pursuing the

of security and appear largely to be a misnomer as they have proved not to be so stable, as exemplified by the collapse of terra usd. at the heart of their instability lies the lack of transparency on the nature and appropriateness of their reserves or on the limits of their stabilisation mechanism, which exposes their holders to limitations and risks on their redemption rights. the absence of any legal recourse is also a concern as many countries, apart from the eu in a few months, have not yet adopted a legal framework, dedicated or not, for regulating the stablecoin issuance activity. ii. the european regulatory stance and the importance of a convergent and coordinated regulatory response 1 ) the european regulatory stance in this context, several countries, such as the united kingdom, singapore, and japan, have sped up their regulatory work within their jurisdiction. but i guess it is fair to say 2 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches that the european union leads the way, with the adoption, last month, of the markets in crypto - assets regulation ( mica ) by the european parliament. mica is a regulatory and supervisory milestone for the crypto ecosystem as it will provide a strict regulatory framework for issuers and service providers of crypto - assets and stablecoins, while addressing a number of major risks. however, if mica is a regulatory milestone, it deserves to be complemented in the next few years with additional requirements. indeed, mica partially covers crypto - asset service providers that combine multiple functions and activities in different jurisdictions, so - called crypto conglomerates. to improve this coverage, it is notably crucial to limit and control the concentration of activities in these conglomerates through strict governance requirements and to enhance investor protection by addressing conflicts of interests and reinforcing redemption rights and the protection of reserves. in addition, mica does not cover the defi ecosystem and its challenges in terms of regulation, given its specificities. to do so, i believe that we should not try to replicate existing financial regulations at all costs, but draw inspiration from regulations in other sectors to regulate for instance " products " even when their " producers " or " issuers " are not clearly identified. furthermore, we have to recognise technical specificities and pay particular attention to the three layers that schematically constitute defi, namely, infrastructures, applications and access gates. to contribute to the development of that extension of mica, we recently published a discussion paper out