Lending and provisioning standards, reporting requirements, minimum capital adequacy and customer due diligence requirements are among the key areas in which there is still little formal distinction made to address the impact of such regulations on the access to financial services to low income households and small borrowers. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Global standard setting bodies therefore have an important role in accelerating the conversion of proportionality principles into practice. This will also be important in the assessment of national financial systems and how it measures up against global standards. For example, under the Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP). Therefore, there are significant benefits to be gained from the provision of guidance to authorities on how regulation can be assessed for its impact on access. Such considerations could also be reflected in the methodologies adopted by international bodies for financial sector assessments and peer reviews. The capacity and capabilities of authorities to provide supervisory oversight financial activities that target the underserved is equally important. Our experience has been that the supervisory skillsets required to evaluate the effectiveness of controls over microfinancing and microinsurance operations differ substantially from those traditionally applied to the retail portfolios of banks and insurance companies. A greater understanding of the product design implications, the relationships that a financial service provider has with its customers and the different motivations that drive consumer behaviour will be important. This is to avoid counterproductive supervisory actions on financial access.
On the other hand, some evidence appears to suggest that digitalisation in the retail trade leads to faster pass-through – that is to say, it increases the responsiveness of prices to shocks affecting the economy, such as the strong appreciation of a nation’s currency. Studies show that the growth of online trade in recent years may have helped to almost double the speed of price adjustments in the US retail industry. 4 Switzerland too has seen a trend towards faster price adjustments over the last few years. 5 Thus, shocks such as strong appreciation or depreciation of the Swiss franc could feed through to inflation more rapidly in the future. The SNB is therefore analysing the repercussions of digitalisation in depth, in order to understand the impact on inflation as thoroughly as possible and ensure that it is able to take action where necessary. 1 For a discussion about the causes and implications of low inflation, cf. Constâncio, Vítor (2017) ‘Understanding and overcoming low inflation’; remarks at conference on Understanding inflation: lessons from the past, lessons for the future? Frankfurt am Main, 21–22 September. 2 BAK Economics AG and Swiss Association of Distance Selling. 3 This term describes the impact of booming online trade on the traditional retail trade as well as on economic growth and inflation. 4 The costs to companies of price changes (‘menu costs’) are generally lower for online traders as they only have to modify their prices online; traditional traders on the other hand have to produce new labels, brochures, etc. Cf.