With broader responsibilities, beginning in the mid-1980s and until the mid-1990s, the Bank of Greece undertook the leading role in the deregulation of the financial system.
Financial liberalisation was a gradual process, however, so that the lifting of controls could take place in tandem with the restructuring of the economy and thus avoid the potentially destabilising effects of abrupt and sharp reversals of international capital flows. This strategy proved wise; in the 1990s many Asian economies, which had not given sufficient consideration to sequencing, were exposed to severe financial crises.