We can look back at 18 consecutive quarters of economic growth; this is a robust, broad-based economic recovery. Now is the time to sort out the issue of non-performing loans. Banks need ambitious yet realistic plans to deal with their stocks of NPLs. And they need the right governance for these plans. Earlier this year, the ECB published its “Guidance to banks on non-performing loans”. Along these lines, and as part of our supervisory dialogue, we take a close look at the banks’ ability to manage their NPL stocks. We then scrutinise the plans devised by the banks to reduce those stocks. We will start providing our feedback later this month. 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  Banks have to carefully consider how they will react should any performing loans happen to become non-performing. So, with the future in mind, we have to ensure that the problem of NPLs does not recur. New NPLs should therefore be conservatively provisioned within a reasonable period of time. This would serve to strengthen the balance sheets of banks, enabling them to focus on their core business. That’s why we have drafted an addendum to our guidance on non-performing loans. It sets out how we expect banks to provision for future NPLs. The main goal is to have timely provisioning, which should prevent new NPLs from becoming a problem with systemic implications. But let me say that while our expectations are firm, there are no automatic actions attached to them.
If the process of authenticating yourself is easy and secure, you are more likely to begin using and continue using additive financial services. Payments is the most basic financial service. People are more likely to continue using digital payments if they can do so without regard for the recipient’s mobile provider or bank. In Singapore, in the case of both identity authentication and payments, we have striven to make the user experience seamless and delightful. MyInfo is Singapore’s shared consumer e-KYC engine. • There are more than 50 government and 200 private sector digital services that a user can access via MyInfo. •  Our personal data is spread across different government agencies. • They are not brought together because any one government agency should not know all the personal details about a citizen; agencies should only collect and access data relevant to their work. • MyInfo empowers the consumer to give consent to his service provider to access his personal data residing in different government agencies, be it for opening a bank account or applying for a credit card. PayNow is our system for cheaper, faster and secure interoperable peer-to-peer payments. It has reached $ billion in transactions per month. Other countries, notably India, Estonia, and the Nordics, have also created advanced industrywide digital infrastructures. • A next step would be to learn from one another’s experience in developing public digital infrastructures – to meet our own country needs as well as to ensure seamless interoperability of these infrastructures across borders.