For long, the SEPA-vision seemed as remote and dreamy as the paradisiacal Indonesian island that is actually called “Sepa”. But the vision of a borderless payments area is now becoming a reality and in the search engines Sepa island has already been crowed out by references to the SEPA-project – much to the annoyance of the Indonesian tourist industry, I guess.
The ultimate goal of these reforms is to turn risky shadow banking into resilient market-based financing. The latter is an essential and valuable part of the modern financial system. Getting the market to work I have spent some time today outlining an ambitious and necessary set of measures that will significantly improve the safety and the stability of the financial system.