Thomas Moser: Implementing monetary policy with positive interest rates and a large balance sheet - first experiences

Speech by Mr Thomas Moser, Alternate Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Money Market Event, Geneva, 9 November 2023.

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

Ladies and gentlemen

Good evening. I am delighted to welcome you to this year's Swiss National Bank Money Market Event in Geneva. It is great to see so many of you here this evening.

After a decade with almost no inflation and nearly eight years of negative interest rates, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) raised its policy rate back into positive territory in September 2022. At the same time, we adopted a new approach to implementing monetary policy in the money market. At last year's Money Market Event, Andréa Maechler and I discussed the SNB's transition to a positive policy rate and our newly adopted implementation approach.

Today, I would like to share our first experiences with this new approach. In doing so, I would also like to touch on the question of whether the new approach should be applied in the longer run, once the size of the balance sheet has been reduced sufficiently. This is a question that other central banks are also concerned with, and one that is currently being debated at international level among academics and practitioners.

Before I come to these topics, I would like to briefly discuss the current economic environment and the SNB's monetary policy.