Daniel Mminele: Transitioning to new interest rate benchmarks: Why is this important for financial policy?

Keynote address by Mr Daniel Mminele, Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, at the Risk South Africa Conference, Cape Town, 23 October 2018.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

I would like to thank Risk South Africa for inviting me to speak at this conference. After a long day of speeches and presentations, I hope I manage to keep you engaged over the next few minutes, well aware of the fact that I stand between you and a cocktail function.

I have been asked to make some remarks about the reform of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), specifically what the future of Libor entails and what the reform of interest rate benchmarks in general means for market participants. Given the recent work done by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) on this topic, I thought I would use this opportunity to also talk about how we are thinking about the reform and the overall design of interest rate benchmarks in South Africa.