Four times a year the Riksbank produces a so-called inflation report. This is a detailed account of the state of the Swedish economy, which leads to an assessment of inflation in the coming two years. These assessments are based on the development of GDP, investments, consumption, public expenditure, the central government budget balance, foreign trade and various prices. The forecast horizon is adapted to the time period that “the Riksbank’s weapon”, the so-called repo rate, has an effect on the economy. 3. The morning after the Executive Board has made an interest rate decision, which normally takes place 6-8 times a year, the decision is published with a motivation in a press release. The Governor of the Riksbank, the Executive Board member responsible for preparing the monetary policy decisions and some of the Bank’s economists also take part in a press conference and answer questions when decisions have been made to change interest rates or when the so-called inflation report is published. 4. A few weeks after the Executive Board has had a monetary policy meeting, minutes are published from the Executive Board meeting where the submissions made by the different Board members are presented anonymously but where any reservations against the inflation report and/or majority decisions on the interest rate are reported stating names. The Riksbank, together with the Bank of England, has a distinctive position among central banks with regard to openness. In this respect the Bank of England has shown the way for the Riksbank.
Opening up the market to competition and authorizing a second credit bureau in 2016 was a further step towards improving the quality of services provided to credit institutions and consumers. The range of products offered has expanded to include new decision-aiding tools, such as “behavior scoring”, “portfolio monitoring” and “alerting”. In close coordination with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Bank Al-Maghrib is currently working to rapidly develop the legal and regulatory framework of “credit bureaus” in order to expand its scope to other nonfinancial data providers, including telecom operators and water/electricity suppliers. This will help the unbanked population to have access to financing, as demonstrated by the experience of pioneering countries in this area. 2  As regards the implementation of the second pillar, the Bank has undertaken since 2016, in collaboration with the IFC, an appraisal of the existing system and has identified the characteristics of the future credit registry. In this connection, today’s seminar is a real opportunity for us to learn about the experiences of forerunners in this field, with a view to finalizing our own roadmap. Ladies and gentlemen, Six regulators, well known for their optimal use of credit registries, will present to us today how they use credit reporting data to achieve their core missions, particularly micro and macro prudential regulation, systemic risk control and monetary policy, and strengthen off-site supervision.