. fairly frequently, however, at about a third of the meetings, at least one member has entered a reservation against the interest rate decision. as an aside it may be worth pointing out that for some time now it has perhaps been more noticeable than before if we are in disagreement. these days, we also have to decide on a forecast for the repo rate. at the meeting in july, for example, all of the board members agreed to increase the interest rate. but three of us felt that the forecast for the repo rate path in the period ahead should be some - what lower. this disunity attracted a lot of attention in the media and also provided some clues that made it easier to forecast what the vote would be at the latest meeting. previously, before we began publishing interest rate forecasts, there were also different opinions among the board members about how the interest rate should develop in the future. but as no forecast for the repo rate was published and there was nothing concrete to enter a reservation against, any differences of opinion were not visible to the outside world. it is probably also the case that the future development of the repo rate was not discussed as much internally then as it is today. disagreement a healthy sign another thing that i feel is worth pointing out is that disagreement among the members of the board should not be seen as a sign of weakness. this would perhaps be a reasonable interpretation if you held the view that the board members should be so wise that we can simply " calculate " which decision is the only possible correct one and agree on it. unfortunately, the world is far too complicated for this to be possible. and if it were possible there would be no real reason to let the monetary policy decisions be made by a board with six members. it would be enough to have a single wise decision - maker. in recent decades, however, the trend has been in the opposite direction. all over the world, it has become more and more common to let monetary policy decisions be made by a group of individuals – a committee or board – rather than by a central bank governor alone. probably the most important explanation for this is that many central banks have become more independent in this period. this has made it seem more natural to delegate the right to make decisions to a group of people rather than to one individual. this development has meant that research on monetary policy decision - making in groups has accelerated. 1 one result that has emerged is that groups tend to make better decisions than

is generally accepted by the payment recipients. one example could be mobile payments. if the launch of new mobile payment services continues, perhaps i as consumer will need to have a couple of different payment applications in my mobile phone to be sure of being able to pay in different shops. similarly, the retailer will then need to subscribe to several different payment services. last year, an inquiry on the use of cash in sweden was published, and earlier this autumn the commission of inquiry presented its report entitled cash management in sweden. this inquiry has resulted in a number of proposals and i will discuss two of them here. the first is that it is proposed that the riksbank has overall responsibility for cash management in sweden. the second is that the counting services of cash - in - transit companies should become subject to licence and come under financial supervision. it is recommended that the riksbank become the supervisory authority for these operations. the riksbank welcomes the work of the inquiry as we consider it important that cash management in sweden functions smoothly. we have taken part in the work of the inquiry and will now analyse the proposals put forward and respond to the submission sent out for comments. cash changeover positive but entails practical challenges it is not only the banks ’ services that need to become more user - friendly, cost - effective and certain over time, our banknotes and coins also need to develop in the same way. when the new banknotes and coins are introduced, starting next year, the size and weight of the banknotes and some of the coins will decline and two new denominations will be introduced ; the 2 - krona coin and the 200 - krona banknote. the banknotes and coins will thus become much more user - friendly and will be cheaper to handle. safety is also increased through the new security features. i believe that we all agree these improvements are positive for all parties concerned. however, as with electronic payments, the introduction of the new banknotes and coins will give rise to some practical problems and friction during a transitional period. bis central bankers ’ speeches firstly, there is a huge amount of banknotes that are to be replaced ; 300 million banknotes are to be withdrawn and around as many are to be put into circulation. for coins the figure is 500 million to be distributed in both directions. secondly, sweden has one of the world ’ s most automated cash systems. this means that all appropriate equipment in sweden must be adapted to be able to handle the new banknotes