In this respect, I wish to make a concrete commitment to the fight against overindebtedness, with, since 1 January 2018, a simplified procedure, which will reduce processing times by several months for many of the 180.000 families that we help each year. I also wish to commit to promoting financial inclusion: we have recently adopted, together with banks and associations, the recommendations to extend the diffusion of specific banking services to vulnerable customers, because there is still insufficient awareness of this right, with only 10% benefiting from it. Lastly, as regards the economic and financial education of the public, in order to build on the achievements of 2017 with our 450,000 pages consulted on our website "mesquestionsdargent.fr", and almost 15,000 social service providers and 3,000 teachers have been given information by Banque de France staff, we will do more still in 2018. I have two last wishes to make, anniversary wishes this time: for our Golden Gallery, whose 300th anniversary we are celebrating, a venerable age, and for the European Central bank, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary on 1 June 2018. Two more joyous occasions for us to meet again this year. Happy New Year to you, to your businesses, and to our country. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
Brexit  Nowhere has that been more obvious than Brexit. On June 24th 2016, we started contingency planning for a ‘no-deal’ Brexit. With our focus on making sure finance can serve the wider economy, our work has had two elements. First, checking that, whatever economic disruption arises as we leave the EU, major banks have the capacity to keep lending through it. We know from our stress tests that banks can withstand an economic scenario for the UK that is worse than the financial crisis. That stress test scenario encompasses even a Brexit scenario based on the very worst case – ‘disorderly’ – assumptions, including: severe disruption at the border, acute economic uncertainty and financial market instability, and sharp increases in inflation requiring interest rates to rise. On that basis, we’ve been able to judge the core of the UK banking system to be able to continue to serve through Brexit, whatever form Brexit takes. The second element of our work has been to ensure that households and businesses using services from EU financial companies can continue to draw on those services after Brexit. 70 branches of EEA banks operate in the UK and provide services to both EU and UK end users. UK households and businesses hold 16 million insurance policies with EU insurers.8 UK investors invest in funds based in the EU. And clearing houses based in the UK sit at the centre of EU and global derivatives markets, helping the financial system to manage and distribute risks.