Category Archives: Supervision

Buy Now, Cry Later? A Look Into a New Phenomenon in Digital Payments and E-Commerce

Over the last few years, the growth of ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) services has been exceptional. This niche product, finding itself conveniently at the intersection of the burgeoning digital payments and e-commerce spheres, and appealing to a new generation of spenders more comfortable with technology and less concerned about privacy than their predecessors, has […]

COVID-19 and the Lessons for Widening Sustainable Finance

We are in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic. Apart from the tragic loss of life, the economic implications will be felt for years. This will not only be in terms of the businesses that have been closed down, many of which will never re-open, but also through effects on employment and career development, and […]

Crisis Preparedness in the Age of COVID-19: a Primer

Maintaining confidence and the smooth functioning of financial markets[i] Since the initial publication of this blog post, this article has been further developed into a full fledged SEACEN Policy Analysis Paper, which has been published on the SEACEN Centre Website on 15 May 2020. The paper can be accessed here. As the world shelters from […]

COVID-19: Financial Stability and Business Continuity Management – Part B

This is the second of a two-part series of our discussion on COVID-19, financial stability and business continuity management (BCM). In Part A we discussed the steps regulatory authorities can take to implement their own BCM programs, and expect from their regulated FIs, during the current pandemic. This blog post is Part B, and is […]

Coronavirus and the Global Economy: Central Banks’ Policy Responses Update 1

This post is an update of our blog Coronavirus and the Global Economy: Central Banks’ Policy Responses published on 5 March 2020, chronicling central banks and policymakers’ responses to COVID-19. We note that the COVID-19 outbreak has generated both demand and supply shocks reverberating across the global economy. Among major economies outside of China, the […]

COVID-19: Financial Stability and Business Continuity Management – Part A

In many conference speeches, training presentations and papers since the end of the Great Financial Crisis, we often heard or read that “we don’t know when or from where the next crisis will come, but it will surely come.” It is too early to say that COVID-19 is or will precipitate another large scale global […]

Coronavirus and the Global Economy: Central Banks’ Policy Responses

Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in China, central bankers and policymakers have kept a very sharp eye on the health of the global economy. In some cases, Covid-19 has been compared to SARS in 2003, which some economists estimate cost the global economy $45 billion. At that time China only represented 8% […]

A New Tool to Measure a Bank’s Risk of Failure

A recent paper argues that despite the revisions to the Basel capital framework (Basel III/IV), the fundamental flaw in the underlying methodology used for calculating the amount of capital a bank should hold remains, and that the true risks the bank may be subject to continue to go undetected. Entitled “ELPR: A New Approach to […]

The Beginning of the End for the Dollar?

The weakening of the dollar and the end of its dominance of the global financial system has alternately been predicted and appealed for over many years. Yet the fact that this is now being publicly called for by a member of the establishment, indeed by no less than the Governor of the Bank of England […]