Improved profitability is, furthermore, one of the requirements for banks to be able to generate capital organically and raise their solvency. 10/17  In recent years the legal risk of Spanish banks associated with litigation has increased significantly. Banks have been involved in a large number of legal proceedings questioning certain contractual conditions of their mortgage exposures. In many cases they have already paid the cost of these proceedings (for example, in relation to floor clauses more than € million was refunded to customers up to January 2019), but there are still many major legal proceedings yet to be resolved. Above and beyond the cost that litigation may entail for banks, a more general implication is the loss of reputation for the banking sector. Banks must make an effort to reverse this perception by providing their customers with necessary information in a clear and transparent manner and affording them access to financial products suited to their needs and financial knowledge. 11/17  All this must not distract banks from persevering in their efforts to improve their efficiency ratios and pursue investments, particularly in new technologies, to enable them to reduce costs in the medium term. It should be kept in mind that in the coming years banks will have to issue considerable volumes of debt with various levels of subordination to meet minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities.
Accountability and transparency are essential counterparts of independence, and the media play a fundamental role in ensuring that they are put into practice, which is why our participation in events such as this one is so important. So I should like to thank the APIE for organising this event and inviting us to participate. This look back reminds us that, more than 10 years ago now, an international financial crisis hit Spain particularly strongly, arriving at a time when the economy was suffering from significant domestic and external macro-financial imbalances. Spain’s banking system was clearly excessively large at the time, over-concentrated on lending funds to real estate and residential construction activities and highly dependent on international wholesale financing. These significant vulnerabilities meant that the cost of the crisis in terms of GDP and – even more importantly for society – unemployment, was very high and much larger than for our main competitors. In fact, Spain’s GDP returned to its pre-crisis level only two years ago. As regards the labour market, the unemployment rate is still five percentage points higher than in 2008 and more than 10 percentage points higher than in countries like the United States and Germany. And that is a reminder of the importance of strengthening mechanisms to analyse and diagnose promptly the risks and vulnerabilities facing the economy and, in particular, the financial system.