This is all the more so in times of crises. Secondly, in a point related to the importance of the banking operations that I have just mentioned, the management of policies – both monetary and financial system stability policies – must fully mobilize the information and intuition obtained from all corners of the broad central banking functions.
For all the progress we have made, there’s still one topic that continues to worry me. Roughly eight years on from the onset of the financial crisis, a number of European banks are still saddled by disturbing amounts of non-performing loans (NPLs). Therefore, scaling back these legacy exposures is one of the foremost aims of banking supervisors in the euro area, and rightly so.