We will discuss these matters in more detail at one of the upcoming sessions with Minister of Economic Development 3 / 11  BIS central bankers' speeches  Maxim Oreshkin. The second area of ? ?our activity is maintaining financial stability. Here, our focus is also shifting: from reversing the negative consequences from earlier risks to preventing new systemic risks. On this, I would like to highlight three main points: First. The systematisation of macroprudential regulation. We already have experience in cooling the consumer lending market and staving off bubbles (in 2013), in driving a shift away from bank balances in foreign currency, and implementing de-dollarisation. However, we typically introduced such measures by way of changes to our standard regulatory acts. We are planning to prepare stand-alone regulation as early as this year, encompassing all macroprudential policy measures. In our opinion, this will allow us to streamline the system, foster a countercyclical approach, and make it clearer and more transparent for the market to use these tools. Second. The introduction of the “payment-to-income” ratio in order to influence the consumer lending market more effectively. The corresponding advisory report we published has already been discussed with the market. We will soon produce solid proposals. Third. The new regulations related to the credit history bureau. It is the credit history bureau that comprises the key infrastructure for collecting information on borrowers’ aggregate debt. Here there is a fork in the road.
Higher competition, in its turn, improves the efficiency, which ultimately leads to higher quality and lower prices for consumers. Indeed, this is one of the main ideas underpinning the European single market. This idea is undoubtedly true also for the banking industry. There is increasing evidence of the positive link between the efficiency of the financial system, of which banking is the most important part, and the wealth and growth of the real economy. Thus the potential benefits of a more efficient financial system are substantial. Considering that most financial services bought by consumers (private individuals and SMEs) are bought from their bank, the low integration (and in many cases low efficiency) of European banking is a significant hindrance to creating an overall efficient market in financial services. Barriers to integration Why then is integration of European retail banking not happening or only happening very slowly? The first and second bank harmonisation directives and more recently the many initiatives within the Financial Services Sector Plan, FSAP, have set the legal framework for cross-border expansion. In principle, any European bank can easily set up or acquire a subsidiary in another member state. More importantly, a bank only needs one single banking licence in one member state to be able to offer banking services in all EU member states. So why are we not seeing serious integration of European banking? A number of possible reasons have been cited. These could roughly be divided into three kinds: economic, regulatory, and political.