Each year, a larger percentage of community banks report fintech firms as their primary competitors for consumer loans, the Farm Credit System as their primary competitor for agricultural loans, and nonbanks as their primary competitor for mortgage loans. While not necessarily surprising, these and other data underscore that there is a new and evolving competitive landscape for banking services in the United States.
Our new monetary policy framework – centred around the Repo rate - places a high premium on the ability to accurately measure the pulse of the economy at any point in time and to anticipate short term trends. Very often this is a difficult task because sufficient information is not available on a timely basis.