In Finland, the decision to put supervision close to the central bank was made already earlier [– in 1994 regarding financial sector supervision and in 2009 also insurance sector supervision – ] based on lessons learned from the banking crisis in the early 90’s and on practical reasons like efficient use of limited resources in a small country.
The Financial Supervisory Authority (the Fin-FSA) is at the same time an independent organisation, with its own decision-making structure, but also an integral part of the Bank of Finland. We have now reaped important benefits from our model during the recent financial crisis. There are several examples of the benefits of our model.