towards the project, from inception right through to the final stages of the project implementation, and now the launch of the solats. also, i acknowledged the unwavering service of the payments experts, project managers, it technical teams and operational teams that worked together, often times under stressful situations, to enable us come together this morning and celebrate such a huge achievement, despite the many challenges we encountered since inception in 2019. let me now take you through a few major achievements that i think are worth highlighting this morning : first, at the inception meeting in 2019, we made mention of the need for policy makers, regulators and industry players to collaborate on issues of importance to the youth in the digital inclusive economy of the near future. i am pleased to inform that we have taken a major step forward in recent years, to not only recognise the place of youths in the digital economy, but document it in the third national financial inclusion strategy ( nfis3 ) 2021 - 2025. it is our desire for higher level of inclusiveness in the economy through our renewed focus on bringing innovative and responsive financial services, built upon digital and accessible technology, to the market. this is consistent with the broader national objectives of solomon islands government's national development strategy ( nds ) 2016 - 2035, with a digital approach to financial inclusion guided by the g20 high level principles of digital financial inclusion. as such, objective 1 of the nfis 3 states, to'amplify the reach and quality of digital financial services, products, and channels.'under this objective, activity 1. 2, specifies the establishment of an inclusive payments infrastructure. this morning i am pleased to announce that this has been achieved with the launch of this payment infrastructure. second, i'd like to reiterate the importance of the legislative changes through the enactment of the national payment system act 2022 by the last parliament and the subsequent amendment to the cbsi act 2012. the enactment of the payments system act 2022 resulted in part 6 of the cbsi act 2012 being repealed. a payments legislation that provides the specific mandates for cbsi to carry out its'operational'and'oversight'roles is highly necessary to mitigate the risks in the payment ecosystem. 2 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches while we have made successful strides in modernising our legal framework, we are aware that the advent of modern technology has also brought about innovations in the payment landscape. with these innovations come new challenges, shaped by

. i will come back to this point later on. the elimination of currency risk within the euro area has also had far - reaching effects on the equity markets. this is crystal clear when observing volatility patterns and portfolio allocation methods. as regards volatility patterns, recent developments seem consistent with the predictions of economic theory, where stock prices should reflect expectations of future dividends, interest rates and risk premia. it follows that the introduction of the euro should be associated with a reduction in differences in volatility across markets. indeed, a recent empirical study demonstrates that those countries whose stock exchanges had a structural high or medium volatility regime, converged towards those with a low volatility regime. from the point of view of the european stock market as a whole, this shows an improvement in global efficiency. as regards investment patterns, sector - diversification strategies have been defined as an alternative to country diversification. before emu, it was common practice for institutional investors to make geographical diversification their first priority, and, secondly, to select securities in accordance with a sectoral diversification pattern. there is some evidence that the “ home bias ” has weakened since the introduction of the euro. for instance, assets held by pan - european investment funds represented 25 % of total assets at the end of 2000, up from 12 % in 1998. the development of a genuine paneuropean approach is also illustrated by the introduction of various european stock indexes. the turnover on options based on these indexes - for instance, the volume of options traded on the eurostoxx50 contract - now matches the turnover of options based on well - established domestic indexes such as the cac in france. this provides evidence that large investors are looking for - and actually have recourse to - hedging products that are suited to a cross - border oriented strategy. however, this evidence of a strong impetus towards integration does not necessarily support the argument that a brand new asset allocation is overwhelmingly dominant. let me emphasise two aspects. first, pan - european sectoral strategies have also embraced non - euro area stocks in order to reach an appropriate level of diversification. this is the case in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, or telecom equipment, with stocks listed in non - euro area countries such as switzerland, the united kingdom and sweden. this is in line with some theoretical assumptions, which are stating that currency risk is outweighed by the risk - return parameters, as far as investing in e