Another issue for financial authorities and central banks is an adequate consideration of environmental hazards in financial institutions’ risk management, supervisors’ rules and practices, and economic modelling. Again, insurance companies and insurance regulators are very much part of this process; I shall go back to this point in a minute.
Since the second half of 2008 global growth in the payment instruments market has declined, a trend apparent in Italy too; cards, however, and in particular pre-paid cards, appear to have weathered the storm best.