Chart 8 Major UK banks’ unguaranteed term issuance in public markets(a)  Source: Thomson Reuters DataStream  Chart 9 Aggregate SLS repayment profiles  Sources: Bank of England, Dealogic and Bank calculations. (a) 2011 Q2 is up to and including 15 June 2011. Term issuance refers here to securities with original contractual maturity or earliest call date of at least 18 months. This excludes debt issued under HM Treasury’s Credit Guarantee Scheme. (b) It includes subordinated lower Tier 2 and Tier 3 capital instruments with debt features. Despite a number of shocks along the way, markets have been increasing in their resilience over the past two years. For example, UK banks have been able to continue to issue debt in  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  both public and private markets during 2011, in spite of renewed sovereign debt concerns, the natural disasters in Japan and civil unrest in the Middle East and North Africa.6 Moreover, that issuance has been spread across an increasingly diverse range of instruments including, more recently, UK RMBS (Chart 8). This has helped the UK banks alleviate concerns about the “funding cliff” of official sector refinancing at the end of 2011. For example, it has facilitated the remarkable pre-emptive reduction in the amount outstanding under the Bank’s Special Liquidity Scheme (SLS), from around £ at end-February to just £ at the end of May (Chart 9). Chart 10 Credit Default Swap premia(a)(b)  Sources: Bloomberg, Markit Group Limited and Bank calculations. (a) Five-year senior CDS premia.
And then, when the European chapter of our story is completed and the denar remains our historical symbol of stability, I believe that it will be confirmed once again that as a central bank we have walked down the right path. Since the 2008/2009 Global Financial Crisis and the experiences of the COVID crisis, in a time of accelerated changes on the world stage as a result of globalization, digitalization and financial innovation, the mandate of central banks has been constantly changing and expanding with new functions. All current and new functions and activities  3/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  of modern central banks that protect the public interest are already part of our vision, but not as an activity that we forecast for the time future and distant, but as something we are already working on. Among other things, we are particularly dedicated to financial education and inclusion given the importance of increasing knowledge about financial services, especially at a time of rapid fintech development, which would eventually provide easier access to finance for citizens and companies. In support of the fintech development, we drafted the first version of the national strategy, with a view of making our story a regional leader in this area as well. Following the example of the European Central Bank, this year, when we celebrate thirty years of the introduction of the denar as our currency, we initiated activities to consider the introduction of a digital denar.