At 125 grams per capita, Switzerland has the largest gold reserves per head of population of any country – triple those of Germany and quintuple those of the US (left-hand side of slide 8). The SNB’s gold reserves have remained constant in recent years and it has no plans to sell its holdings. The value of our gold reserves has thus moved in line with the gold price in recent years (right-hand side of slide 8). However, given the substantial increase in the SNB’s foreign exchange reserves since 2009, the share of gold as a percentage of total currency reserves has indeed changed, recently falling to just below 8%. Now let us turn to the gold initiative, which goes to the vote in just a few days. The supporters of this initiative are demanding that the SNB hold at least 20% of its assets in gold and at the same time requiring a ban on ever selling gold again. Moreover, the initiative demands that the gold must be stored exclusively in Switzerland. In order to achieve the share of 20%, the SNB would have to almost triple its gold holdings within five years. In practice, given today’s balance sheet total and gold price, the SNB would have to purchase 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  around CHF 70 billion worth of gold – around two-thirds of the world’s total annual gold production. The SNB considers the initiative to be unnecessary and harmful. Its legal mandate is to ensure price stability.
Banking supervision was not always tasked to the central bank, with many central banks lacking a clear mandate for macro prudential policies. As it comes to advanced economies, the common practice before the crisis was generally characterized by separation in responsibilities with respect to monetary policy and banking supervision, delegating each function to a different regulator. Looking at EU, the integrated model of supervision was predominating across the member states, capturing the form of unified financial and banking oversight under one single national authority, but generally, not the central bank. The situation was quite different in emerging countries where central banks tended to be the main micro prudential supervisor for banks. In response to the crisis, there was a visible convergence in both, advanced and emerging economies, towards integrated supervision under the common roof of the central bank, usually by using the “new” formula of  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  macro-supervision. The role of sound supervision was endorsed as absolutely vital for promotion and maintenance of healthy financial system, while central banks got recognized as leading protagonists in the area of prevention, management and resolution of financial crises. Thus, in 2010, the US has passed the Dodd-Frank Act redesigning the role of FED in financial supervision, while in EU there is an ongoing process towards a banking union assigning banking supervision to the ECB together with the national supervisory authorities of the participating member states.