There is not a consensus in the academic literature on what source of financing has a higher contribution to financial stability and economic growth.1 On the one hand, banks, through their interaction with firms, manage private information which benefits the allocation of credit and favors a better and cheaper access of firms to financing when the bank-firm relationship is well developed.2 On the other hand, liquid and efficient financial markets offer the possibility of allocating households’ savings to long-term projects without the need of monitoring these savings. Although financial intermediaries and markets have been generally considered as alternative and competing ways of overcoming frictions between savers and investors, they can be also considered as complementary sources to achieve an optimal allocation of capital. In fact, there is some evidence in the economic literature that a proper diversification of firms’ funding leads to more investment3 and to a lower vulnerability to financial shocks.4 These results suggest that financing structures based exclusively in one of the two sources of funding are probably suboptimal. Certainly, the experience of the recent global banking crisis clearly shows that firms relying only on bank financing had more difficulties in their access to external funding than companies with a richer diversification of their liabilities.
8 See Aiyar, S., Calomiris, C. W., and Wieladek, T. (2016) “How does credit supply respond to monetary policy and bank minimum capital requirements?”, European Economic Review, 82, 142-165, Fraisse, H., Lé, M., and Thesmar, D. (2015) “The real effects of bank capital requirements”, HEC Paris Research Paper No. FIN-2013-988, De Jonghe, O., Dewachter. H.. and Ongena, S. (2016) “Bank Capital (Requirements) and Credit Supply: Evidence from Pillar 2 decisions”, National Bank of Belgium No 303. 9 For detailed evidence on how P2P platforms compete with banks, see de Roure, C., Pelizzon, L., and Thakor, A. (2018) “P2P Lenders versus Banks: Cream Skimming or Bottom Fishing?”, SAFE Working Paper No. 206. 5/6  benefits for the society, including a greater financial inclusion by reducing intermediation costs, which would improve the access to funding of households and SMEs. In any case, at this stage, the ultimate impact of new technologies on the structure of the financial system is highly uncertain as it will depend on different factors including the regulatory treatment of the new players.10 Today´s conference will cover all these issues related to the recent changes in the structure of financial markets and their implications for the banking system. We have the privilege to have as speakers experts in those areas from academia, policy makers, think tanks and the banking industry. I am sure that we will have a very productive debate and that we will improve our understanding of these issues.