Antoine Martin: The Extended Liquidity Facility (ELF) - the next step in the Swiss National Bank's liquidity support to banks

Text of the public lecture by Mr Antoine Martin, Vice Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMB), Geneva, 29 April 2025.

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

Good evening everyone

It is an honour to speak to you here tonight at the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies. The ICMB has long been an important platform for discussing money, banking and finance – all areas central to the Swiss National Bank. Our institutions have built a strong partnership since 1974, and I am delighted to continue this long-standing dialogue.

As a central bank, the SNB plays a crucial role in managing banking system liquidity. We do this to implement monetary policy, ensure the smooth functioning of the payment system, and also to support financial stability. Tonight, I will focus on our role in providing liquidity to fulfil our statutory mandate of contributing to financial stability. As lender of last resort (LOLR for short), the SNB stands ready to step in during crisis situations – when banks' own liquidity buffers are no longer sufficient to cover their needs. A recent example was the liquidity assistance provided to Credit Suisse in March 2023. This event gave rise to renewed interest in how we design and implement liquidity support.

I would first like to examine the evolution of our role in this regard, and how we developed our framework for emergency liquidity assistance (ELA). Looking to the future, I will then describe our new framework for liquidity support, centred on the Extended Liquidity Facility (ELF). The ELF encompasses ELA and brings liquidity support closer to standard operations. I will end with some recommendations for strengthening banks' resilience to liquidity risk more broadly.