And our vision for Thai commercial banking and financial services – if it is to be useful – must consist of two parts within a single integrated framework: one for our main banking activities and the other for those in rural areas. As we look at cross-country experiences on commercial banking and financial system inquiries, we were drawn toward the experiences of Australia, Canada, and South African. The South African’s Standard Bank has been quite innovative in using new technologies to reduce cost of providing banking services to the urban poor who were formerly thought of as un-bankable. Similarly, the Canadian Financial Services Taskforce put much emphasis on “ensuring highest standard of quality and services to consumers, regardless of their income, and regardless of where they live; urban or rural, and also to individual businesses, whether they are large or small”. On the other hand, the emphasis of the Australian Financial System Inquiry on “the facilitation of financial conglomerates to realize economies of scale and scope as well as streamlined regulatory structure base on functional not institutional distinction” will become more and more relevant in the future as consolidation and diversification within our financial system lead to similar types of business model. Coming up with a broad vision is comparatively a simple task; the real challenge is to work out the details of how we plan to modernize of our financial system. Here, we have to articulate our vision and implementation strategies together from both practitioners’ and regulators‘ point of view.
4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Glossary CESEE – Countries of Eastern and South-East Europe; SSM – Single Supervisory Mechanism (EU) ESRB – European Systemic Risk Board (EU) FSOC – Financial Supervision Oversight Council (USA) ECB – European Central Bank EBA – European Banking Authority FSB – Financial Stability Board PRA – Prudential Regulatory Authority (UK) FPC – Financial Policy Committee; BRRD – Banking Recovery and Resolution Directive (EU)  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5