Today, the global banking industry is at a major inflection point, facing several internal and external challenges that are coming  *  Keynote speech delivered by H.E. Dr. Mohammad Y. Al-Hashel, Governor, Central Bank of Kuwait at CBK International Banking Conference: Shaping the Future, September 23rd 2019, Four Seasons Hotel, Kuwait City – Kuwait. Central Bank of Kuwait - Public ‫ عام‬- ‫بنك الكويت المركزي‬  -2-  together to create a perfect storm. Certainly, the industry will not be able to weather this storm by holding on to the same course it has pursued for decades. Rather it must reinvent itself for the future. That is why CBK is organizing this event under the theme of ‘Shaping the Future’. We believe that all stakeholders in the banking industry need to take a proactive role in shaping the way banks operate in the future, rather than continuing along the well-trodden path, no matter how well that path had previously served them. Taking this opportunity, I would like to share a few thoughts on our vision for the evolution of the banking industry. I will begin with a brief overview of the major challenges that the industry faces today. Second, I will reflect on the key areas that banks will need to focus on in order to stay relevant. Finally, I will touch upon the role that enabling stakeholders need to play to support the banking industry through its transformative journey.
But even a snail can make considerable progress provided it keeps going. I am told that the world record for a snail is about 16 cms a minute, or roughly one kilometre in 4 days. On that basis a snail could leave here this evening and be in the BIS in Basel in under a year. It necessarily takes time to build an international consensus to move forward on any significant issue, and you need a broad consensus if whatever it is you agree is to have any meaningful effect. And if you look back over ten, or even five, years, rather than just at the outcome of any particular meeting, then the amount of progress really has been very considerable. Overall economic management Let me illustrate this first in relation to the broad consensus that now exists – within the developing, emerging, and transition economies as well as within the industrial world – on the general approach to overall economic management. That consensus can perhaps be summed up essentially as "macroeconomic stability and supply-side flexibility", though that characterisation needs elaboration. On the macro-economic side we have learned – and it has taken some countries longer than others – that you cannot achieve what we are all trying to achieve – sustained growth, high levels of employment and rising living standards – simply by pumping up demand in our economies through expansionary monetary and fiscal policies without proper regard to the underlying supply-side capacity of our economies to meet that demand.