I do not need to tell you that there is still a lot to be done. You have said so yourselves many times. These good words must be transformed into actions, and soon, because time is running out. It is no good having the right diagnosis if you don’t apply the medicine and cure the disease.”  6  BIS Review 50/2003
In turn, this in depth knowledge will allow supervisors to fully exploit the proportionality principle embedded in regulations for those viable projects that might finally exit the test environment. Because we should not forget that such test environment should have a temporary nature. Hence, for those projects that prove viable, the principle of same regulation for similar activities and risks should prevail. In any event, it is currently difficult to foretell how the development of these disruptive technological players will evolve in the future. Like any process of change, financial disintermediation will involve significant benefits for society; but it is not free from challenges for banks, for the regulator and, naturally, for the Banco de España itself, in its role as guarantor of financial stability. Among the benefits for those demanding funds, associated with a more diversified financing structure, are, on one hand, their greater stability in the face of shocks that affect specific institutions in the financial sector. Indeed, the international financial crisis highlighted the greater difficulties in gaining access to funding for those firms depending exclusively on bank lending, in contrast to those with a more diversified financial structure. These problems were more acute for those firms – chiefly SMEs – operating with a small number of banks more harshly affected by the crisis, since the possibilities of replacing their usual lenders with new banks was not always easy owing to asymmetrical information problems.