With the November 2019 adjustment, banks’ exemption thresholds became dynamic, in the sense that the reference period over which the exemption thresholds are calculated is updated each month as the sliding window over the preceding 36 months. Starting in January 2015, a bank’s exemption threshold was determined as 20 times its minimum reserve requirement, based on the October 2014 reference period. With the November 2019 adjustment, its exemption threshold was raised to 25 times (raised further to 30 on 1 April 2020) its minimum reserve requirement, using a moving average of the minimum reserve requirements over the preceding 36 months. Page 9/13  The increases in the exemption thresholds also broadened the scope for additional liquidity redistribution, causing trading volume on the repo market to rise. Indeed, repo market trading volume, shown by the vertical blue bars in Chart 4, increased substantially in November 2019, as did the number of banks active on the repo market. Let us now take a closer look at the impact of the exemption threshold adjustments on the repo market and, in particular, at the tools the SNB has deployed to ensure that secured money market rates remain close to its policy rate. The role of SNB monetary policy operations in the money market The increases in the aggregate exemption thresholds have changed the dynamics in the repo market, as they simultaneously caused the demand for liquidity to rise and the supply of liquidity to fall in the repo market.
At that time, commercial banks did not have the capability to assess the viability of the industry, nor accept the intangible assets offered as collateral. It was only much later, 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  when the industry recorded healthy profits that private investments followed. The success speaks for itself. Between 2008 and 2011, private domestic and foreign investments in the culture content industry had quadrupled to more than USD 157 million. The second example is Uganda’s first ever private bond issuance by a multinational mobile telecommunications company. The provision of a financial guarantee by a development financial institution helped to connect Uganda’s poor and low income population in more than 20 rural communities by enabling access to telecommunication services. This culminated in the telecom industry that now provides 135,000 jobs for Ugandans and contributes 1.4% of its GDP. Taking lessons from these examples, I believe that development financial institutions need to possess three key traits to promote and champion the new growth areas: a. First, they must have specific mandates to develop and prioritise niche segments identified to be of strategic and economic importance. These will give them legitimacy with funders and partners; b. Second, affiliations with Government, ministries and agencies to facilitate the design of appropriate government support. This will enable them to take higher risks; and c. Third, a broader focus on socio-developmental goals allows risk-return trade-offs to take into account positive externalities for the economy.