Taken together, the reforms are expected to result in wider product offerings and delivery channels, service quality improvements, greater market transparency, and more differentiated pricing that is reflective of risk. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  This will help risk managers for whom the decision to purchase insurance is increasingly driven by wider considerations which go beyond just the intention to transfer risk. Significant advancements in risk management practices and financial innovations have substantially broadened the actions that risk managers can take to control risks. For many companies, insurance solutions are no longer viewed as the only, or even the most important, way to reduce risk exposures. The insurance reforms will allow the industry to better respond to changing demand drivers. Importantly, it will also create opportunities to build stronger partnerships between corporate risk managers, insurance companies and insurance brokers in elevating risk management practices more generally. This includes a wider role envisaged for the industry in providing risk advice to clients, and initiatives to advance the quality and coverage of risk information that is useful to risk managers across a broad spectrum of areas, such as information on hazard exposure, demographic changes and technological risks. Conclusion In conclusion, maintaining that delicate balance between extreme risk aversion and wellreasoned risk taking, which is essential for businesses to grow and prosper, will always involve difficult judgements. We should be careful to ensure that advancements in risk management practices are serving to sharpen, and not blunt, such judgements.
Minouche Shafik: A new heart for a changing payments system Speech by Ms Minouche Shafik, Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking of the Bank of England, Bank of England, London, 27 January 2016. *  *  *  I would like to thank Andrew Hauser, Chris Salmon, Ankita Mehta, Grellan McGrath, Toby Davies and John Jackson for their comments. The Bank at the heart of the payment system Sometime around 1770, just a few yards from where we are sitting tonight, two of the commercial banks’ so-called “Walk Clerks” congregated at the Five Bells Tavern for lunch, weary after a morning spent visiting each of their competitors in the City of London. 1 They reflected disconsolately on their increasingly impossible task of exchanging ever-rising numbers of paper cheques at each individual bank and settling ever-larger outstanding balances. The idea occurred to one of them that they might encourage all of their colleagues – for each bank had such Clerks – to join them for lunch at the Five Bells every day, where instead of their tiring morning tours they could carry out a much speedier, more reliable exchange of cheques. Thus a clearing system for the City of London was born, from which many of the UK’s modern payment systems descend. From the start, the Bank of England has stood at the very heart of this system. Historically, banks had settled their net obligations to one another in coin. But coins were an inefficient settlement asset, being difficult and risky to transport.