I would like to draw your attention on the following topics: •  The system should be more active and keep its public promises to put its windows at the service of selling Treasury bills directly to the interested public. We as Bank of Albania have kept our promises, applying a commission, which is supposed to cover the transaction cost, while this measure will be accompanied by the inhibition of cash receipts at the Bank of Albania windows. Also, banks should invest in modern technology to enable the reallocation of funds of their customers in various investment alternatives, by electronic means and not as it happens more frequently today that individuals still move carrying cash bags. •  Banks should be more active in the T-bills secondary market. We should clearly inform the public that whoever is interested can discount his/her bills at any time like each individual  3/4  who has put little money aside can refer to the banking system not only to deposit but also to purchase Treasury bills. •  The interbank market can and must improve. Nowadays, commercial banks exchange a big quantity of liquidity with the central bank. But, even exchange of this liquidity among commercial banks must be intensified. This would ensure more financing and investing opportunities for individuals and companies, including banks. •  Banks should give more attention to foreign exchange and Treasury bills markets, to further deepen and expand them.
In contrast the asset management regulators had no real concept of consolidated or group supervision and looked primarily at each legal entity in a group by itself. A small building society would be visited by staff from the Building Societies Commissioner every six months, while the insurance regulators’ norm for a company with far greater assets than 42  that small building society would be one visit every three years . Through a series of public papers, the FSA therefore embarked on defining a common approach towards all of the institutions it supervised. It defined its interactions with firms into 5 broad activities: authorisation; baseline monitoring; thematic work; specific risk mitigation; and work once a risk has escalated or crystallised. 40  Building Societies Commission (BSC);Friendly Societies Commission (FSC); Insurance Directorate (ID) of HM Treasury; Investment Management Regulatory Organisation (IMRO); Personal Investment Authority (PIA); Registry of Friendly Societies (RFS); Securities and Futures Authority (SFA); Securities and Investments Board (SIB); Supervision and Surveillance Division (S&S) of the Bank of England 41 FSA website: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/about/what/approach 42 Foot, Michael. ‘The FSA: The first six years’, Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, Vol. 12 Issue. 3, (2004), pp. 201-205 14  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  14  The extent of the FSA’s interaction with firms was defined by its assessment of two factors: a firm’s probability of failure and its likely impact upon failure.