Brunner and Meltzer’s classic monetarist account emphasises the importance of a rich set of credit, term and liquidity premia in monetary policy transmission. These premia drive the spreads between the policy rate established by central bank and the interest rates at which firms and households borrow, which are most relevant for spending and pricing decisions in the real economy. Brunner and Meltzer conclude that these spreads are largely unobservable – in particular, in a bank-centred financial system they will be codified in loan covenants and pricing that are proprietary and/or confidential. Monetary quantities play an important role in characterising the transmission mechanism because they both influence and summarise this body of information in spreads and premia in a way that is both accessible and relevant. Changes in financial structure over recent decades have implications for the Brunner / Meltzer motivation of monetarist transmission. Not only are credit conditions surveys and bank level data on funding costs and the pricing of loans more readily available, but the greater importance of asset markets and NBFIs in the provision of external finance to firms implies that spreads and premia are more often transparently priced in open markets. The focus has correctly shifted towards NBFIs. This has led to the construction of weighted averages of asset prices – so-called Financial Condition Indices (FCIs) – as an alternative to monetary aggregates for capturing the impact of financial pricing on monetary policy transmission. [13] But the weights assigned to different asset prices are controversial and experience with such indices has been mixed.
Bank customers can process an e-Cheque any time. II. As physical boundaries and barriers are no more, both payers and payees can enjoy the e-Cheque service with the convenience of mobile phones or Internet banking platforms anywhere. III. E-cheques are quick and easy to use. In just a few simple steps, the payer can issue an e-Cheque via an Internet banking platform. Upon receiving the e-Cheque, Adopting a highly secure digital signature, e-Cheques remove the need for the payer’s handwritten signature as required with paper cheques, reducing the risk of forgery. V.  Unlike certain electronic payments or funds transfers, the payee does not need to disclose his bank account number to the payer in order to receive an e-Cheque payment, which means greater privacy protection. For those payees who have more than one account, he can also enjoy the flexibility of deciding which account to deposit an e-Cheque into. VI. Corporates and institutions which issue a huge volume of paper cheques can save substantial sums on printing, processing and mailing those cheques. In Hong Kong, listed companies process over 2 million physical cheques each year for dividend payments. Both paper consumption and mailing costs can be reduced substantially each year if shareholders agree switchinig to e-Cheques to receive these payments. Looking forward 4. The e-Cheque is only at the beginning of its development.