back, it appears the latter was the case. in 2008, the trend changed. real assets per person declined for a period during the financial crisis. given the nature of that event and the potential risks it presented, that is not surprising. real asset prices have since risen again but, so far, have not resumed the earlier trend rate of increase, and at this stage they show no signs of doing so. they look very much like they are on a much flatter trend. this adjustment has been considerably less abrupt than those seen in some other places. nonetheless, it is a very substantial change in trend. if people had been banking on a continuation of the earlier trend, they would be feeling rather disappointed now. of course if that earlier trend in gross wealth owed something to a tendency to borrow to hold assets, then a continuation would have exposed households to increased risk over time. casual observation suggests that this change of trend in the growth of assets, or “ wealth ”, roughly coincided with the slowing in consumption spending relative to its earlier very strong bis central bankers ’ speeches trend. it seems fairly clear that these financial trends and the real consumption and saving behaviour of households were closely connected. i would argue that the broad story was as follows. the period from the early 1990s to the mid 2000s was characterised by a drawn - out, but one - time, adjustment to a set of powerful forces. households started the period with relatively little leverage, in large part a legacy of the effect of very high nominal interest rates in the long period of high inflation. but then, inflation and interest rates came down to generational lows. financial liberalisation and innovation increased the availability of credit. and reasonably stable economic conditions – part of the so - called “ great moderation ” internationally – made a certain higher degree of leverage seem safe. the result was a lengthy period of rising household leverage, rising housing prices, high levels of confidence, a strong sense of generally rising prosperity, declining saving from current income and strong growth in consumption. i was not one of those who felt that this was bound to end in tears. but it was bound to end. even if one holds a benign view of higher levels of household debt, at a certain point, people will have increased their leverage to its new equilibrium level ( or, if you are a pessimist, beyond that point ). at that stage, debt growth will slow to be more in line with income, the rate of saving from current income will rise to

banco de espana is stepping up the efforts it devotes both to monitoring technological innovation and to anticipating its potential consequences. through a crossdepartmental working structure, various matters are being addressed in order to contribute to constructing an informed opinion and helping define the central bank ’ s strategic positioning. subjects under analysis are, for instance, the implications of the provisions of the new directive on payment services, known as psd2, whose partial transposition in spain is imminent, under the government ’ s annual regulatory plan, and to which i shall shortly refer. and there are also other topical matters, such as distributed ledger technology, “ cloud ” computing and the phenomenon of sovereign digital currencies. 3 / 8 against this backdrop, the aim of my address is to offer some observations as to how the new technologies are changing the traditional bank - customer relationship, and to highlight the need for banks and customers to responsibly manage this new scenario. likewise, i wish to stress the importance of financial education in this new scenario. customers have more options, but also more responsibility, and it is essential they should be aware of this. returning to the origins of the concern for the rights of bank customers. to set these observations in perspective, we might recall that concern in spain to safeguard customer rights arose in the 1980s, as a consequence of the liberalisation the industry underwent and which enshrined freedom of contract – of interest rates and commissions – at the core of its workings. accompanying this process, legislators adopted a series of measures aimed at boosting competition among banks, including most notably the enhanced comparative information with which banks must provide their customers, so that they may know the content of their rights and obligations before and once they have given their consent. however, this concern for customer rights came into being and developed in a context of maximum customer confidence towards banks and, most importantly, towards bank employees, which, in short, led to a high degree of customer loyalty to banks. during the 1990s and in the first half of the last decade such loyalty was negatively and slowly impacted by growing competition and the subsequent need to improve net interest margins. and the crisis unleashed as from 2007 saw the culmination of this deterioration and led to a significant loss of confidence by customers in banks, giving rise to a new scenario. against this background of public mistrust in banks, and the weakening of the aforementioned degree of loyalty, the new technologies add additional challenges for the industry when it comes to tending to