Ignazio Visco: First G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting

Remarks by Mr Ignazio Visco, Governor of the Bank of Italy, at the First G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, Session II, press conference, 26 February 2021.

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

Good afternoon,

Today we had a very productive session on financial stability and financial inclusion. All delegates provided valuable contributions to the discussion and expressed broad support for the Italian G20 Presidency's priorities in these areas.

We had a more in-depth discussion on the lessons learned during the pandemic from a financial stability perspective. This is the first initiative of the work programme agreed with the Financial Stability Board for 2021. We focused on the main areas that will be covered in its assessment, namely financial institutions' use of capital and liquidity buffers, the impact of pro-cyclicality on financial and prudential standards, and the functioning of operational resilience arrangements and crisis management frameworks under the strain of the pandemic. With the pandemic still ongoing, we acknowledge that any assessment of lessons learned will inevitably be preliminary and tentative. But it is important to start this work now, in order to understand whether the regulatory reforms introduced after the global financial crisis are working as intended, and whether they have contributed to enhancing the resilience of the SESSION II -FIRST G20 FMCBG MEETING Page 3 of 5 banking sector under the first major test presented by the pandemic. The analysis will help to identify policy issues of international relevance and assess whether some adjustments to the existing framework may be necessary. The initial findings will be discussed by Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) in July and the final report will be delivered to the G20 Summit in October.