The financial storm experienced in March with the bankruptcy of some small banks in the US and the collapse of Credit Suisse make it necessary to speed up the implementation of a European deposit guarantee fund. It was one of the claims made by the president of CaixaBank, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, during the colloquium "Present and future of banking: reflections on a changing world", held yesterday at the XXXVIII Meeting of the Cercle d'Economia.
He shared a table with Fernando Restoy, director of the bank of central banks BIS. “The issue of completing the banking union is evident,” Restoy agreed. In his opinion, "we must denationalize" the banking risk to avoid that the guarantee of deposits "depends on each country and the economic vicissitudes that country may go through." he added he.
The economist also wanted to highlight that the movements of deposits seen in the US, where through new technologies there was a rapid flight of customer resources, signifies a structural change that must be analyzed. Although for now he does not believe that it is necessary to apply regulatory changes, he did think that it is essential to analyze the effects of the new systems. With a simple mobile in a matter of seconds you can transfer deposits from one entity to another.
In the discussion that was moderated by Núria Mas, a professor at IESE, José Viñals, president of Standard Chartered bank, also participated. In the opinion of the former IMF adviser, one of the challenges for the future will be the impact of big tech companies such as Apple or Alibaba on financial services. “Big tech has undoubted advantages but I think we can compete and collaborate like Apple and Goldman Sachs have done,” he added.
Goirigozarri wanted to assess the role of traditional banking and the options it has to look at big tech on an equal footing. “When talking about these issues, it seems that it is taken for granted that traditional banks are in a battle that they are going to lose and I do not agree,” said the president of CaixaBank. And he recalled that years ago it seemed that the fintech companies would take over the entire business and it has not been the case. “The bank has a huge customer base,” he recalled.
Viñals specified that "it is important to draw lessons from what happened in March." But at the same time -he said- "what has worked well" must be maintained and not changed. "I am optimistic about the future of banking," he stated.
