I therefore take this opportunity to thank the 91 rural banks participating in MABS, including their nearly 500 banking offices, for being at the forefront of delivering microfinance services to millions of Filipino microentrepreneurs. Ladies and gentlemen, let us give our MABS-participating rural banks a well-deserved round of applause!
For the U.S. global systemically important banks (G-SIBs), we have also imposed an additional capital surcharge designed to reduce the threat that a failure of any of these firms would pose to financial stability.