It’s also been aided by domestic polices, including the Funding for Lending scheme, a series of regulatory actions to improve the strength and resilience of our banking system and, more recently, the Government’s Help-to-Buy policies. I fully recognise that the ability of many SMEs – perhaps many of you here today – to access credit at reasonable rates still remains impaired. But even here my sense is that some progress has been made. That’s the message from surveys of small businesses, from reports by the Bank’s Agents, and indeed that I get from my own conversations with many businesses around the country. We’re not there yet – and the Funding for Lending scheme remains in place to encourage banks to lend more to companies, particularly SMEs – but we have taken a step in the right direction. For households, the improvement has been more marked. Interest rates of new mortgages, especially those for fixed-rate mortgages and those with higher loan-to-value ratios, have fallen by well over a percentage point since the summer of 2012. Unsecured personal loan rates have fallen by even more. The greater ease with which many families can access credit has fed through to the housing market, which until recently had been in a state of deep freeze. Housing transactions fell very sharply in the wake of the financial crisis and subsequently flat lined. Nominal house prices moved sideways for several years. But over the past six months or so, there’s been some thawing.
Indeed, this attitude has, in many respects, proved highly advantageous for the country. Nonetheless, it doesn’t change the fact that international competition has increased and that the Swiss are making the most of the growing number of possibilities to avail themselves of goods and services from abroad. BIS Review 69/2004  1  Of course, we can’t talk about Switzerland without also talking about the Swiss franc. The Swiss franc forms the basis for the Swiss National Bank’s monetary policy autonomy and for price stability. It also underpins the efficient Swiss capital market, which is characterised by a low interest rate level, when compared internationally, and which represents an important locational advantage for the country. The European political and economic environment - of which Switzerland is an integral part - has, however, gone through a great deal of change. It is therefore not surprising that our relationship with Europe is a topic of much discussion in my country. 2. Switzerland and the European scene  For almost six years now, Switzerland has been surrounded by the single European currency. And for six years we have been trying to make it clear to our friends abroad that Switzerland is nevertheless not an island, but is in fact deeply integrated into Europe. Approximately 20 percent of our workforce comes from EU member states. A total 60 percent of our exports go to the EU and 80 percent of our imports come from there.