Further, to guarantee wide access to its refinancing operations, it also increased the range of eligible collateral by reducing the rating threshold for certain asset-backed securities and allowing national central banks to accept as  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  collateral additional performing credit claims (i.e. bank loans) that satisfied certain criteria.
The set of eligible collateral was further increased during 2012, to support bank lending. These decisions, together with the announcement of Outright Monetary Transactions in August 2012, have been crucial in reducing financial segmentation and mitigating banks’ funding difficulties.