But I do have empathy, because regulators are also sometimes caricatured – in our case as single-mindedly risk averse, driven by an incentive to avoid firm failure, and paying insufficient attention to counter-balancing commercial incentives. Like any caricature, this one starts with a single distinctive feature – it is the job of the regulator to uphold prudential standards particularly in good times when the long term benefit, indeed necessity of maintaining standards is easily overlooked – and then magnifies that one characteristic to the exclusion of all else. Today I want to look past the caricature and explain how we really think about the relationship between capital requirements and the rest of the prudential regime, in the context of the government’s review of Solvency II. Goals of the review of Solvency II What does the PRA hope that the review will achieve? We are committed to upholding the principles of Solvency II – they are our principles, and given the amount invested by firms in implementing the Solvency II regime, we see no appetite to tear them up and start again. The top level goal of the review is instead to tailor a regime based on those principles to the UK market.
M R Pridiyathorn Devakula: Commercial Banking and Financial Services - our Vision for Thailand Speech by M R Pridiyathorn Devakula, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Conference on “Modernizing our Financial System: Challenges for the New Millennium”, Bangkok, 23 January 2002. *  *  *  Your Excellencies Distinguished Guests Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of you to our conference on "Modernizing our Financial System: Challenges for the new Millennium". I would also like to express our deep appreciation for the distinguished speakers who came all the way from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and South Africa to share with us their expertise and knowledge on this very important topic. And, of course, to the World Bank, our co-host, for help organizing the conference. Our financial crisis in 1997 and its subsequent impacts highlighted the lesson of critical importance that dynamic and strong domestic financial institutions are vital to sustainability of development and growth. Over the past 20 years, financial sector has been one of the major forces that support our progress and financial services share in our GDP has grown from a mere 3 percent to roughly 8 percent. It is the fifth largest industry in term of value added to our GDP, and currently employing more than 300,000 of our workforce. Nevertheless, despite such favorable development, there are some concerns: -  First, in term of competitiveness of our financial institutions, there is room for improvement.