BoE-HKMA-IMF conference on monetary, financial and prudential policy interactions in the post crisis world

The Bank of England (BoE), Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held the third joint conference on the interactions of monetary, financial and prudential policies in a post-crisis world at the IMF in Washington DC on 8 and 9 November 2017. The conference once again provided a forum of exchange between senior policymakers and leading academics from around the world, focusing on issues emerging in the post-crisis environment, with a roundtable discussion on 9 November conducted under ‘Chatham House Rules’. The main themes discussed were (i) implications of low interest rates for the business models and risks of financial institutions; (ii) the use of monetary and macroprudential policy tools to address financial stability risks; (iii) global co-ordination of monetary and prudential policies; and (iv) interconnectedness and procyclicality. This report summarises the main issues discussed by participants during the two-day conference. Lessons from these discussions, and indeed those from the previous two conferences, include the need to look at the financial system as a whole, not least by gathering relevant data, the importance of understanding better the benefits and limitations of macroprudential policies and their interactions with regulatory and monetary policy, and the need for further global co-ordination on financial policies even if challenging.