This is particularly true in financial crises, in the course of which an assessment of the solvency and riskbearing capacity of a bank depends on many quantitative and qualitative parameters; we should recall the often difficult valuation of assets that came under pressure in the crisis or those that were not marketable.
For the ECB this aspect is more important than for many other central banks. Our monetary policy works via the bank transmission channel, so it is bank-based. Thus, for our open market operations almost 1,800 business partners are currently registered. By way of comparison, the Federal Reserve has only 21 primary dealers.