Economy

Bank Of England's Bailey Speaks About UK Financial Outlook

Britain's economy is proving resilient to higher interest rates, he says.

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Britain's economy is proving resilient to higher interest rates, he says.

Economy

Bank Of England's Bailey Speaks About UK Financial Outlook

Britain's economy is proving resilient to higher interest rates, he says.

Share this article

Britain's economy is so far proving resilient to higher interest rates, but it will take time for the full impact of the climb in borrowing costs to feed through, the Bank of England said in its half-yearly Financial Stability Report on Wednesday.

Following are highlights of remarks by BoE Governor Andrew Bailey and other senior BoE officials at a press conference to present the report.

BOE GOVERNOR BAILEY ON INTEREST RATE RISK

"The UK economy and financial system has so far been resilient to interest rate risk."

"The FPC will remain vigilant to these risks and these processes taking effect."

"It is the case that elements of the global financial system do remain vulnerable to increased interest rates and uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook, and of course tensions geopolitically speaking."

"We will continue to monitor credit conditions for any signs of tightening which are not explained satisfactorily by changes in the macroeconomic outlook."

BAILEY ON LABOUR MARKET

"The current level of pay increases are not consistent with inflation targets. I mean that's, I'm afraid, you know, a fact of life, and we have to deal with that."

"I think there are some interesting pieces of evidence (in labour market data) ... it's a continuation in some cases, if you look at the vacancy to unemployment ratio, for instance, of some signs of the labour market cooling."

BOE'S BAILEY ON HOUSEHOLD STRESS

"We have a much stronger labour market ... it is helping a lot in terms of the stress that households are seeing."

BOE'S BAILEY ON THE BANKING SYSTEM

"The resilience of the banking system is not a constraint on banks managing their net interest margins, and therefore managing the rates they pay to savers and the rates they charge on mortgages."

"It is also important that we have competition in the banking system, which encourages banks to compete and compete on saving rates. And again, just to re-emphasise a more resilient banking system will be able to compete."

BAILEY ON LDI FUNDS

"We've essentially sort of set what we think is the sensible buffer level for them to hold as a buffer against stress. What that meant was that when interest rates went up, there was no disorderly need to ... try to call down assets to recapitalize the LDI funds."

BAILEY ON CREDIT SUISSE

"There was a resolution on Credit Suisse let's be clear on that. It wasn't a resolution that followed the playbook exactly."

"There were doubts cast on the globally significant bank resolution plans more broadly by virtue of not using the playbook and deciding that the playbook couldn't be used."

"That's a very serious issue... We can't live with a world where there's ambiguity that's just not of course, acceptable, the risk is much too great."

BOE'S JON CUNLIFFE

"I think the big difference is that the amount of household debt, that's being carried, is much lower now than it was at the time of the financial crisis. So households aren't really over levered as they were before."

(Reporting by Suban Abdulla, Farouq Suleiman, Sarah Young; editing by Kate Holton)

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Bank Of England's Bailey Speaks About UK Financial Outlook

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