When we started the ISB we were at the dawn of the era of personal computing, and today every adult and most children use sophisticated electronic communications devices as a matter of course. The simplest cell phone nowadays is capable of text messaging, and can be used for banking and financial transactions.
In the majority of countries in the region (apart from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania), credit growth has essentially been financed by deposit growth, and changes in banks’ net foreign asset positions appear to be associated, to an important extent, with rising net claims on central banks.