Speech given by Andrew Bailey, Deputy Governor, Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive Office, Prudential Regulation Authority.
At the Society of Business Economists Annual Dinner, 3rd June 2013
"Thank you for inviting me this evening - it is a great pleasure to have this opportunity and particularly at a time when we are embarking on major reforms to policymaking in the area of financial regulation.
The financial crisis has provided hard lessons on what happens when the stability of the financial system is found wanting. It has reminded us how much we depend upon the supply of critical services from banks, insurers, investment firms, asset managers and other parts of the financial sector. If you take the banks as Exhibit One, there is good reason to curse them, but at the same time recent experiences have only served to emphasise how much we depend upon them, like it or not. The new legislation on financial regulation in the UK emphasises the importance of the continuity of supply of critical financial services. This is a permanent public policy objective, and rightly so. I use the term "permanent" deliberately to distinguish this objective from the support provided by Too Big / Important to Fail, which should not be permanent.
The Financial Policy Committee of the Bank of England, the FPC, has the task of identifying, monitoring and taking action to remove or reduce risks with a view to protecting and enhancing the resilience of the financial system in the UK. These risks at the level of the system can include those arising from structural features of financial markets, from the distribution of risk within the financial system, and from unsustainable levels of leverage, debt or credit growth. The emphasis here is very clearly on ensuring the resilience of the financial system."
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