of the data ), new services could be developed to facilitate personalised financial services. more generally, the advent of ‘ big data ’ analytics to generate insights into behaviours of individual consumers has increased interest in access to data on consumer payments behaviour. but with more data being stored and shared, data security ( and cybersecurity more generally ) will be important ongoing issues for the industry and for regulators. incumbent financial institutions invest a lot in securing their customers ’ data and in managing fraud in payment systems. mostly they do this without the need for regulators to be involved because it is in their interests to ensure that they maintain the trust of their customers. but with new participants and new technologies, there is a risk that security vulnerabilities and opportunities for fraud will arise. the strength of the system is only as good as its weakest link so it is essential that all participants in payment systems and the financial system more broadly manage and mitigate these risks. regulators may have a role to play in encouraging the adoption of minimum standards. resilience the final area i want to focus on is resilience of payment systems. traditionally, central banks and regulators have paid a lot of attention to the resilience of high - value payment systems because of the systemic disruption that would likely occur if such systems were to suffer from an outage. high - value payment systems are therefore subject to high standards of operational resilience. 4 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches retail payment systems have not usually been required to meet similarly high standards. but, with electronic payments becoming increasingly important, the resilience of the electronic retail payment systems is becoming quite critical to the smooth functioning of economies. with people carrying less cash, an outage in a retail payment system can mean that customers can ’ t undertake transactions. in australia, for example, an outage at a major bank recently meant that its merchant customers had to turn customers away if they didn ’ t have cash ( and many didn ’ t ). these sorts of outages disrupt commerce and erode trust of consumers in payment systems. regulators are therefore starting to focus on the operational risks associated with retail payment systems and whether the operators and the participants are meeting appropriately high standards of resilience. conclusion there is a lot of change happening in retail payments and it is happening quickly. financial technology is facilitating the development of new payment products and the entry of new participants, and potentially transforming the customer experience. it has the potential to enhance competition and increase

addition, we have no contemporary experience as to how labour costs will evolve in a world where the national unemployment rate is below 4 per cent. we do know, though, that wages growth remained modest a number of years ago when the unemployment rates in new south wales and victoria were temporarily around 4 per cent. the point here is that there are many unanswered questions. we are unlikely to know the answers quickly. there are many moving parts on both the demand side and the supply side of the economy and it will take time for these various issues to be resolved. this is relevant to the board's deliberations about monetary policy to which i will now turn. monetary policy i want to start with the decision the board took yesterday to end the bond purchase program. the final purchases under this program will take place on thursday 10 february. in taking this decision, the board considered the three criteria that have guided it from the outset : ( i ) the actions of other central banks ; ( ii ) the functioning of our own bond market ; and ( iii ) most importantly, the actual and expected progress towards our goals of full employment and inflation consistent with the target. all three criteria pointed to the same conclusion : that is to bring the bond purchase program to an end. most other central banks have already completed their programs, or will shortly do so. the federal reserve has announced that it will end its program in march and the bank of canada, the bank of england, the riksbank and the reserve bank of new zealand have all ended their programs. this is relevant because one of the reasons we introduced our program was that other central banks were buying bonds. if we hadn't also done this, our bond yields and exchange rate would have been higher than they have been and this would have impeded the recovery from the pandemic. in terms of the second criterion, our bond market is continuing to function reasonably well and the rba's stock lending activities are supporting this. but there have been some pressure points recently. this is evident around the three - year mark, where there has been a gap between the price of the physical bonds and the futures contract. among the range of bonds we are purchasing, the rba owns 42 per cent of australian government securities on issue and 60 per cent of some individual bond lines ( graph 8 ). our assessment is that the market could accommodate further purchases by the rba, but that there would be a rising probability of additional strains emerging.