Fritz Zurbrügg: Current developments in the area of financial stability in Switzerland

Introductory remarks by Mr Fritz Zurbrügg, Vice Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Media News Conference of the Swiss National Bank, Berne, 14 December 2017.

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

In my remarks today, I would like to address some of the developments currently taking place in the field of financial stability. I shall look at the big banks first before turning to the domestically focused banks. I will conclude with a few words on the new banknote series.

Big banks

As Thomas Jordan has already noted, the international economic environment has continued to improve since the last news conference in June. Conditions on the financial markets have remained stable. Premia for bank credit default swaps, for instance, have barely changed since June. Premia have thus settled at lower levels again following the turbulence in 2016.

Against this positive backdrop, both of Switzerland's big banks remain on track to meet the requirements of the 'too big to fail' regulations with respect to resilience. This first pillar of the regulations covers requirements pertaining to the going-concern loss-absorbing capacity of systemically important banks. Both Credit Suisse and UBS already comply fully with the final, risk-weighted requirements. However, further improvement is needed with respect to the leverage ratio.