As in the case of foreign currency mortgage loans — and you remember how we had to deal with the crisis related to foreign currency mortgage lending — when people choose a product with a floating interest rate, especially where the initial interest rate is lower, they may be unable to comprehend that they are accepting serious interest rate risks associated with changes in market conditions and rate increases. In this regard, it would be better to prevent a situation we had to address in foreign currency mortgage lending. This also requires regulation, in our opinion. Currently, we are closely studying the international experience in floating interest rates regulation. These practices are quite diverse and comprise both prohibitions and certain limits on a floating range. We also need to introduce such regulation into our laws. Summing up this part of my statement, I would like to stress that we can certainly see no good in establishing new restrictions again and again. Actually, this is not our policy to continuously introduce new restrictions. However, we may not follow Wild West rules, given the maturity level of our financial market. We will need such direct restrictions on an ongoing basis until the banking sector implements efficient self-regulation. The worst thing is that we have to constantly play cat and mouse with you. Banks are inventing a new ‘relatively legal’ scheme — we are liquidating it. This is inevitably increasing the number of disappointed clients.
Today, there are a few areas I would like to focus on: First, I will very briefly recap our Op Res policy, including our expectations of firms and the links to other key policy areas such as outsourcing and Critical Third Parties (CTPs); Second, I will share with you some initial assessments of firms’ progress based on our supervisory work on UK banks and building societies so far; and Finally, I will cover what is coming up next in our Op Res roadmap; this includes our expectations around what firms should be doing, and the supervisory steps the PRA will be taking. 1. The PRA’s operational resilience policy 1/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  Starting with the first of those points, I will provide a short recap of our expectations of firms in the Op Res policy. I will keep this brief as I am aware that many of you will already be very familiar with our expectations. In particular, there are three particular policy expectations that I will draw out. i) Important Business Services The first is the requirement for firms to identify their IBS. Here we expect firms to take a holistic approach and consider all parts of their business in order to identify the full suite of services they offer, and then which of those should be deemed “important”. The definition of “importance” should be based on a service being provided to an external end user and having the potential to threaten regulatory objectives in the event of a disruption.