The G20 communiqué backed the calls for a broader international cooperation in several fronts, but let me remind you that the international community of central bankers and financial regulators have already developed strong cooperation ties. Institutions as the BIS with its regular meetings or governors and of senior central bank officials and experts or forums like the Basel Committees and the Financial Stability Forum have been providing for years the necessary dialogue, exchange of ideas and information between us. I understand that other forums of economic authorities can replicate our own model of cooperation. Regarding the IMF, the discussion currently concentrates around its role and legitimacy. Its role should focus on three main topics. The first is surveillance. It is very important that the IMF becomes a key and integral part of the financial early warning system. The IMF is vital not only in terms of forecasting, which is already regularly performed and published, but also  BIS Review 147/2008  1  in terms of surveillance of each country’s policies and specific warning indicators, aimed at detecting its growing unbalances. One of the points that, in my personal opinion, have complicated efforts to deal with the current financial crisis is that the whole focus of the IMF during decades was to prevent crises in emerging markets. There is a different picture now, and is paramount that the surveillance done by the IMF focus on every relevant economy and really works as an early warning system. The second topic, evidently, is international cooperation.
•  Have refined our rules to allow less complex ETFs which make limited use of derivatives to be reclassified as Excluded Investment Products (EIP) – these can be sold more easily to retail investors. 50. 80% of AUM of SGX-listed ETFs are now classified as EIP ETFs that investors can purchase as easily as they buy individual stocks. Third consumer initiative: spur competitive pricing for life insurance products 51. MAS worked with industry and CASE to create a new online portal, compareFIRST. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  •  Will enable retail consumers to easily compare key features of life insurance products offered by various insurance companies  •  Since its launch in Apr, compareFIRST has registered healthy interest, with over 180,000 visits to portal and more than 110,000 product summaries downloaded. •  Consumers and industry have provided positive feedback on convenience and ease of use of compareFIRST. 52. (DPI). MAS has also worked with industry to make available Direct Purchase Insurance  •  DPI offers consumers access to selected term life and whole life insurance products sold without commissions or financial advice  •  More than 200 DPI policies have been sold in first three months of launch, with a further 100 applications pending approval by insurers. 53. compareFIRST and DPI have spurred more competitive pricing for life insurance products. •  Some insurers have lowered prices of both their DPI and non-DPI insurance products, since introduction of these initiatives. Fourth consumer initiative: enhance financial education 54.