I should note that insurance represents a very large part of the PRA’s activities – at the end of the financial year 2014/15 the PRA had around 550 front-line supervisors and risk specialists working on various deposit taking firms compared with over 300 on insurance firms. Most of the regulatory reforms that the PRA are implementing have not actually originated in the PRA itself. Rather, they have arisen from a variety of external sources. Some are UK initiatives: for example, the new Senior Managers Regime and Senior Insurance Managers Regime implement the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (PCBS) and the structural reform of the major banks (ring-fencing) emerged from the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB, also known as the “Vickers Commission”). A number of key reforms are European initiatives such as the Solvency II regime for insurers. The banking capital regime, CRDIV, is a European implementation of agreements made in the global Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). The development of international insurance standards is being driven by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) via the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS). The UK authorities, including the Bank of England and PRA, play a full part in negotiating these reforms, so I wouldn’t claim that they are entirely external, even though there are usually aspects of the final agreements which represent the middle ground in negotiations.
William C Dudley: The monetary policy outlook and the importance of higher education for economic mobility Remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Council for Economic Education’s 56th Annual Financial Literacy &amp; Economic Education Conference, New York City, 6 October 2017. * * * Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak at this Council for Economic Education (CEE) event, marking the CEE’s 56th Annual Financial Literacy and Economic Education Conference. Given the hard lessons of the financial crisis—and the economic challenges still facing many Americans—there are few goals more worthy than promoting greater financial and economic literacy. As always, what I have to say reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or the Federal Reserve System.1  Personal educational experience Before discussing the economic outlook and the role of education in income mobility, I will offer a few remarks on my own educational experience. While it may not be surprising that I have a Ph.D. in economics, the path that led me to the University of California, Berkeley, is a bit unusual. I started college in the 1970s at Columbia University. On the positive side, the professors were engaging, and I had the opportunity to read the great books of the university’s core contemporary civilization curriculum. But, I was troubled by the emphasis on grades and test taking. I wanted something that was more free-form.