The second change is that we will now hold press conferences in connection with all of the monetary policy meetings, and not, as before, only when we have adjusted the interest rate. The motives for keeping the interest rate unchanged are just as important as the motives for adjusting it. Together with publishing our own interest rate forecasts, press conferences after each monetary policy meeting will provide better and more regular information on the considerations we make. Finally, we Executive Board members will normally avoid implying prior to a meeting what interest decision might be made there, what is known as signalling. And by this I mean signalling above the interest rate forecast, press releases and minutes of meetings that have earlier been published. The actual need for signalling has declined, not least with the publication of our own interest rate path. Our assessment is that it is enough to communicate our intentions clearly in connection with the seven monetary policy meetings held every year. Moreover, we publish our own interest rate forecasts in connection with three of these meetings, when a Monetary Policy Report is published. On the other four occasions we will report a qualitative assessment of how the most recently published interest rate forecast relates to the new information received. I would like to point out that the individual members of the Executive Board will continue to express their own opinions in public.
It is clearly very important that the New Accord be implemented in a consistent manner across various jurisdictions. Market competition should be driven by each bank’s strengths, rather than by differences in each country’s rules. Accordingly, the Basel Committee established the Accord Implementation Group. As you know, this group is responsible for promoting the consistency and quality of implementation of the New Accord and facilitating the exchange of information among national supervisors about bank and supervisory practices. Through the implementation group senior line supervisors are beginning to share among themselves very practical insights on how to assess internal risk management processes. We think that this detailed sharing of information among people who are on the front lines of supervision will go a long way to ensuring that assessments can be done in a more consistent fashion across jurisdictions. We appreciate the very strong endorsement that both the BBA and LIBA have offered in welcoming the formation of the Accord Implementation Group. Indeed, we know that both associations are keenly interested in how the group may well help ensure that a single banking organization active in many jurisdictions not face divergent sets of expectations from different banking supervisors under the New Accord. I am pleased to note that the Accord Implementation Group has taken up this concern among its first topics for discussion. An important goal of the coordination and information sharing is to help ensure that national supervisors, in assessing the eligibility of an internationally active bank’s internal rating system, do not arrive at different conclusions.