cost. larger retailers may have an incentive to offer payment initiation services themselves, hence bypassing their banks and avoiding bank fees. from this angle, psd2 may certainly become a game changer. • the future need for account information services is also difficult to assess, at least where consumers are concerned. account information services can emerge as smartphone apps that give the customer an up - to - date overview of her payments and financial position. this may be quite useful to analyze one ’ s expenditures, when a financial advice is needed, or some financial product. i assume that most people acknowledge the benefits of such a service, especially if information from several accounts is combined. but this is probably just the beginning of the further use of payment data. while the exploitation of account information is extensively regulated, it is a very delicate matter. i will not go into the possibilities and horror stories connected with the commercial use of payment data ( incidentally, the industry prefers the term “ customer intelligence ” ). but let me elaborate a bit on two contradictory attitudes with the general public when it comes to privacy. • in 2014, ing announced it considered to use payment data of its clients for commercial purposes. you may remember that this caused a national outcry on privacy. so fierce that soon after the announcement, ing decided to abandon its plan. a recent survey by carin van der cruijsen, a researcher at dnb, confirms that the dutch public is very reluctant to share their payment data with third parties, even for innovative services. an effective way for banks to lose client confidence is to publicly hint at selling customer data to other firms. at the same time, most people are frightfully willing – or unconscious – in allowing internet firms like google to tap and exploit their search activities on the web. • of course, the european legislator has been fully aware of the privacy concerns. psd2 provides for a number of requirements regarding the use of data and data protection. in addition, the general data protection regulation ( gdpr ) will become applicable soon. but certain issues on privacy are still pending, mainly due to possible contradictions between psd2 and the gdpr concerning consent [, which is the legal basis for the provision of payment services and the use of account information ]. more work is needed on this score by prudential and privacy supervisors. in the netherlands, this requires close cooperation between the dutch data protection authority and dnb. psd2 and the supply side • payments business

but everywhere. to begin with, external lending standards for domestic banks have become more stringent. we see it in that, although our banks have been able to access foreign credit sources, these have been at shorter maturities and with larger spreads over external reference interest rates. this is a reflection of the difficulties that continue to haunt the main global financial institutions and their reluctance to embark in new businesses. this has not altered the liquidity available in the local money market, which has remained stable, aside from some transitory turbulence in early october that was addressed by the central bank through the implementation of new modalities in the provision of liquidity. secondly, the meltdown of world output and trade is increasing credit risk globally. in turn, firms and households with a better financial situation tend naturally to postpone their spending and borrowing decisions, awaiting the normalization of the financial environment, thus shrinking the demand for credit. all of this results in increased average financing cost and tougher lending standards for those agents actually engaging in borrowing operations. we can see that the various risk and volatility indicators are substantially above their preseptember figures ( figure 2 ). as we wrote in our latest monetary policy report, 1 the extra financial burden for the clients of chilean banks has tended to reflect precisely the higher levels of global uncertainty and their impact on the chilean economy. i must stress that these phenomena are occurring today in every economy in the world, sometimes with catastrophic implications on their levels of output and the solvency of their financial institutions. because we prepared as a country for a long while to confront severe deteriorations of the international economic environment, chile and our financial market have suffered limited effects, with no sudden stops but, on the contrary, with increases in credit supply and without a generalized process of insolvency. these same precautions have permitted macroeconomic policies – both fiscal and monetary – to be clearly countercyclical, helping to cushion the effects of the world crisis on our economy. central bank of chile ( 2009 ). the transmission of mpr reductions to lending interest rates one important element in the diagnosis of how this countercyclical effort is actually working is the evaluation we perform on a permanent basis to the way our decisions are affecting the borrowing conditions facing households and firms. this issue is not new, and was the subject of analysis several years back when the central bank ’ s monetary policy was on a sustained expansionary path. 2 the evidence we gathered then can be summed up