However, the actual effect of the structural change towards more market-based financial transactions could be larger than the share of external financing from the market would suggest. The existence of market-based financing through increasing competition within the banking sector may have affected the terms and conditions of bank lending in the sense that banks are now more clearly no longer the only potential supplier of external funding for all but the smallest firms. In other words, the contestability of external financing may have increased, with potential competition from market-based financing limiting the scope for banks to profit from lending relationships. It could be added that banks have been encouraged to take part in the process of securitisation by undertaking investment banking activities such as underwriting, which uses their capacities for collecting information as well as private information based on existing credit relations. This also tends to boost the share of non-interest income in the total revenues of banks. The changes in the structure of the financial system and the role of banks are also illustrated by the emergence of new types of players in the financial system. Most apparent is the rise of institutional investors who are gaining a more important role in allocating savings from the household sector to the corporate sector, both domestically and across borders.
Christian Noyer: The euro and the banking sector  Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, at the Duisburger Banking Symposium, organised by the European Center for Financial Services, on 27 September 2000. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, It is a pleasure for me to speak here at the Duisburger Banking Symposium. The famous American comedian, Bob Hope, once typified a bank as “a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it”. As we all know, this description does not give credit to the extremely important role that banks play in a modern economy. Nowadays, economic life simply would not be possible without the wide range of services and products that banks offer to various groups of society. The issue that I shall address today - the euro and the banking sector - cannot be fully comprehended without considering the particular, and to a large extent unprecedented, nature of the introduction of the euro. The single currency does away once and for all with internal exchange rate fluctuations, completes the structure of the Single Market and, by virtue of its availability to almost 300 million people, increases the efficiency of currency use in an unprecedented manner. The introduction of the euro was a regime shift that will undoubtedly have a major impact on the euro area economy and its financial structure in the years to come.