But let us not only write reports and elaborate ever more sophisticated thoughts, let us act, starting with comprehensive and effective regulation in the US, as has been done in Europe, and as the UK is on its way to doing with its proposed new set of rules that would bring a broad range of cryptoasset activities into the scope of financial services regulation. This is obviously good news, as long as this proposal ensures consistency with existing legislation, notably in Europe. To that end, I suggest the FSB to monitor closely the implementation of its own recommendations on cryptos, as the Basel Committee does on banking regulations. More broadly, big techs did not make the breakthrough in traditional banking activities that many had expected: why is that? Regulatory constraints certainly stand as a first explanation, especially since they were tightened following the great financial crisis. Both lending and deposit-taking are highly regulated in most advanced economies, and big techs tend to set up partnerships with banks in these countries rather than create a fully-owned subsidiary for instance. In addition, the low-rate environment that prevailed until recently may have been unfavourable to new banks – as their business model relies strongly on the value of sight deposits –, and an ageing population in advanced economies may have preserved loyalty to incumbent banks and insurance companies which benefit from high public trust.
François Villeroy de Galhau: Big techs in finance - a bildungsroman that is far from over Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the highlevel BIS conference "Big techs in finance – implications for public policy", Basel, 9 February 2023. *** Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a pleasure for me to introduce the second day of this BIS high-level conference on big techs in finance. While it is a pity to do so from a distance, perhaps that is fitting for a conference on the changes in our working lives brought by digital innovation. Very early on, big techs saw finance as a natural complement – and booster – to their core businesses, launching a technological revolution that might bring many benefits to consumers, across different fields such as payments and stablecoin issuance. Big techs have met with success on some of these roads, and less so on others. Interestingly, some of these developments do not exactly match what we could have expected even four years ago. We can therefore consider big techs' entry into finance as a bildungsroman – a sort of coming of age story – with promising early years and somewhat disappointing learning years partly behind usi. Building on this already significant experience, the maturity years may be ahead of us – but that will only be possible under consistent conditionsii. I. Big techs and finance: a bildungsroman unfolding under our eyes A.