They also permit the holders to combine and separate risks to mimic virtually any financial activity. They thus limit what regulators can prohibit, blur distinctions between instruments regulated by different regulators, and virtually eliminate functional and other distinctions among commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions.
BIS Review 40/1997  -4-  Supervising the Future Financial Services Holding Company When it comes to considering how technology and new products have affected supervision--especially of the future financial services holding company, with its wider powers--I must begin by repeating an earlier comment: Banking organizations are still in the risk business-taking it, managing it, profiting from it, and when they make the wrong decision or have bad luck, bearing losses and perhaps even failing.