. com / bank / checkingaccounts / online - checking - account /. see, e. g., simple, https : / / www. simple. com / ; frank chaparro, “ jpmorgan chase launched an online bank for millennials called finn, and i prefer it to the real thing, ” business insider, july 8, 2018, https : / / www. businessinsider. com / jpmorgan - chase - online - bank - finn - for - millennials - 2018 - 7. - 16 credit to consumers with little to no traditional credit histories. 43 as mentioned earlier, other apps are using faster payments and cheap accounts to offer consumers tools to smooth volatility in their incomes. 44 still other products are using behavioral economicsbased “ nudges ” to help consumers grow their savings. 45 it is still very early, and many of these products have difficult issues to work through with respect to consumer data security and privacy, which may have important implications for pricing of services. again and again, we are reminded that when products are free, the consumers themselves may be the product. for instance, many financial apps that provide “ free ” services earn revenue by being paid for lead generation. other apps may sell consumer data in ways that consumers may not be aware of. 46 for some workers, their employers may be able to be part of the solution, by subsidizing some or all of the costs of using these new tools. for example, some employers are partnering with fintechs to offer their employees better savings tools and the ability to draw emergency funds as an advance on their paycheck. while financial innovation may hold great promise, a lot of work is needed to ensure it will be able to reach communities that lack infrastructure for digital service delivery. in the colonias area on the texas - mexico border, i met with families that are see, e. g., petal, https : / / www. petalcard. com / ; lend academy, podcast transcription session no. 101 – raul vazquez, oportun ( may 2017 ), https : / / www. lendacademy. com / wp - content / uploads / 2017 / 05 / podcast101 - raul - vazquez. pdf. earnup, “ money. the way it should be, ” http : / / www. earnup. com /. see, e. g., lael brain

to achieve a similar effect on the rates banks apply to corporate loans. moreover, lending rates to nfcs fell by some 110 – 140bps in major vulnerable member states, suggesting that the pass - through of the ecb ’ s policy stance has become stronger in those countries that were hit hardest by the crisis and where economic slack was concentrated. this decline in fragmentation can be in part explained by the effects of the tltros. evidence from the bidding behaviour of banks confirms that tltros participation is frequently followed by a compression in lending rates. that is linked to tltro borrowers scaling back their recourse to more expensive wholesale funding, in particular unsecured, which has created scope for banks to reduce lending rates. the transmission of the improvement in banks ’ funding conditions to lower bank lending rates has been further empowered by an increase in lender competition for good credit spurred by our measures. the app has reinforced this fall in bank lending rates, too, by putting strong downward pressure on sovereign yields and thereby reducing the attractiveness of sovereign securities holdings relative to loans. indeed, alongside the direct impact of tltros on bank lending bis central bankers ’ speeches conditions, staff analysis finds that the app has had an indirect effect on bank lending conditions through its marked effect on long - term government bond yields. 1 this indirect effect has been further reinforced by the beneficial impact of lower long - term yields on the macroeconomic outlook and hence on the credit component embedded in lending rates. with bank lending rates lower, the volume of loans to nfcs is now recovering in the euro area as a whole as well. in may last year, before the announcement of the credit easing measures, loans to nfcs contracted at an annual rate of 2. 9 % in the euro area as a whole. since july 2015, however, the year - on - year contraction has stopped and loans have started to grow at a very modest rate just above zero. as a result, fewer small and medium - sized companies ( smes ) report that credit has been a limiting factor for their businesses. in fact, the last results of the survey on the access to finance of enterprises ( safe ), conducted in april this year, show that “ access to finance “, which was considered the dominant concern of smes in 2012, is now considered the least important problem. “ finding customers ” is instead still a primary source of concern for smes. these results mask some heterogeneity : in the major