Birgir Ísleifur Gunnarsson: Iceland in a global setting Keynote speech by Mr Birgir Ísleifur Gunnarsson, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Central Bank of Iceland, at the Euromoney conference on the Nordic Financial Markets and Investment Opportunities, Stockholm, 13 September 2002. *  *  *  Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to participate in this ambitious conference on the Nordic Financial Markets and Investment Opportunities. I will in my remarks today mainly focus on aspects relating to Iceland. Size separates Iceland from the other Nordic Countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Other factors separate the Nordic Countries as well. Finland is a member of the European Union and the Economic and Monetary Union, EMU, as well. Denmark and Sweden are members of the European Union but are outside the EMU. Norway and Iceland are outside the European Union but maintain very close ties to it, particularly through the European Economic Area Agreement. That agreement makes Norway and Iceland a part of the single market of the European Union, which entails among other things that they are obliged to maintain financial market legislation, which fully conforms to that of the European Union. The Nordic Countries have different monetary regimes. Finland is a member of the EMU, Denmark is linked to the EMU through an ERM II agreement entailing that the Danish krona is very closely tied to the euro. Sweden, Norway and Iceland have chosen an inflation-targeting regime as their monetary framework (Iceland in March 2001).
C)  new (non-bank) market entrants  •  the digitalisation of financial services opened the doors for a wave of new market entrants;  •  there are two categories of new market entrants;  •  first, there are start-ups making use of new information technology applied to financial services (“FinTech” companies);  •  second, there are established internet companies (large US social media or ecommerce platforms);  •  In most cases, they do not offer banking services other than the initiation of payments or access to account information;  •  these new product and service providers might present a challenge to the traditional market incumbents’ revenue streams;  •  their impact on the underlying financial market infrastructure will be more limited as the clearing and settlement of payments and securities transactions still take place between the account-holding entities.