But we do also need to consider whether there might be costs to such an approach. For those policy issues to reach closure, we need to know the way forward on resolution. (ii)  Pure universalism  What of the other end of the spectrum? In principle, an alternative approach would be to shift to a more universal approach. A pure form of universalism would rule out separate resolution or insolvency proceedings, ring-fencing and, therefore, a race for assets. It might encourage  2  Basel committee on Banking Supervision (1992). “The insolvency liquidation of a multinational bank”, Bank for International Settlements. Its key conclusions were: (1) when closing a multinational bank, supervisors should pay attention to the nature and timing of communications among themselves and of their communications with creditors, shareholders and management; (2) the nature of liquidation rules may be relevant to the manner in which multinational banks are supervised; (3) differences in liquidation rules across jurisdictions in a windingup can affect returns to depositors and other creditors and the operations of deposit protection schemes; and (4) coordination and cooperation between liquidators can affect the returns to creditors in a liquidation and can be affected by the role of supervisors in a liquidation. 3  See the Bank’s recently published paper: “The role of macroprudential policy: A discussion paper” and Tucker P M W (2009e), “The debate on financial system resilience: Macroprudential instruments” at the Barclays Annual Lecture in London. 4  BIS Review 33/2010  a more cooperative approach to cross-border resolution.
This does not yet account for the losses relating to under-reported taxes which is directly enabled by a cash economy – a cost borne by society as a whole. A 2005 study estimated this figure to be USD100 billion annually in the United States alone The task of calculating the relative total cost of cash and cashless payments is a difficult one. Apart from the methodological challenges, the findings for each study are also likely to differ according to the nuances of each country. Nonetheless it is a worthwhile endeavour. Policy makers around the world have made positive progress in this area, and I believe we will see more efforts on this front in the coming years. This leads to another dimension of the social cost consideration, which is the impact on financial inclusion. Millions of people live in rural areas globally, with little or no access to the modern infrastructures necessary to facilitate cashless solutions. The availability of cash is therefore paramount in ensuring that they continue to be seamlessly included in the financial system. At the same time, the success of mobile payments operator M-Pesa in rural Kenya has demonstrated that cashless alternatives can in fact be a means to promote financial inclusion for the unbanked. Here in Malaysia, where mobile banking transactions have tripled in the past year, there is potential to leverage the high mobile penetration rate to improve financial inclusion. Stability The third element is stability.