The Bank of Russia had switched to inflation targeting in late 2014. In these five years, inflation had been decreased to the target level and has been maintaining near the target. In parallel, interest rates and inflation expectations have been steadily decreasing.

This session will be dedicated to the experience of inflation targeting in Russia and other countries as well as possible improvements to the approaches currently in use.

New technologies are transforming the financial market’s structure, therefore they may also have an impact on monetary policy transmission mechanisms.

Can we predict the nature of such impact today, and will it require altering the existing approaches to monetary policy?

Low interest rates as well as large-scale liquidity injections by major central banks contribute to investors’ interest in buying risky assets.

How does it

1) affect interest rates in the emerging markets, and

2) jeopardise the financial stability of emerging economies, and their debt markets in particular.

The rapid pace of progress has brought about profound transformations of the banking industry: new products and sales channels emerge, while customers’ needs and expectations continue evolving. Amid fiercer competition, traditional banking operations promise ever-smaller returns, and banks have to look for new activities to engage in, such as building their own “ecosystems”.

Meanwhile, non-banking companies are venturing into areas that used to be banks’ exclusive domains. Where will these trends take us in the next ten years, and what will financial intermediation look like in the future?

During this session we will review how the shared-equity construction market has evolved in terms of the funding structure, dynamics of project financing, construction volume, and prices.

We will also discuss the qualitative changes, how risks have been redistributed and whether the reform has been driving new business growth.

Moreover, of course, we will try to resolve the questions yet unanswered and to find ways to address the new challenges arising as the mechanism is being implemented.

Businesses often complain that even though banking regulations aim to contain risks, they often end up standing in the way of economic growth.
To which extent is this true? And what steps does the Bank of Russia take to ensure that prudential regulation both maintains financial stability and supports robust economic growth?

In 2019, the Bank of Russia altered its approaches to regulation of risk –weighted assets when evaluating insurers’ financial sustainability. Moreover, the Bank of Russia is reviewing new initiatives to amend approaches to calculating the volume of insurance reserves.

The goal of introducing a risk-based approach to regulating insurers’ financial sustainability aims is to make the insurers more resilient and to enhance the protection of consumers.

To stay competitive today, insurers must keep up with the pace of technology. Online promotion of insurance services, automatic generation of individual insurance products and insurance rate, and the rapidly developing tools for remote claims settlements – these are the technologies that make insurers’ operations more effective and client-oriented.

But even though insurers are beginning to introduce such new solutions to their business processes, there are still quite a few factors in the way of their full-scale implementation: online activities of insurance agents are subject to restrictions, automated exchange of information with federal executive authorities’ databases is not allowed for insurers, risks of insurance fraud remain high, and the industry as a whole remains remarkably conservative in its focus on personal communications with clients.

The Bank of Russia seeks to increase consumers’ trust in establishing long-term savings with insurance undertakings and to protect the investments of life insurance consumers, and to this end we have suggested introducing a guarantee system for the life insurance market.

Such system is supposed to make the public more interested in long-term savings with insurance undertakings. Is the market interested in such a system?

The session will cover how fiduciary duty has re-shaped the process of investing. The participants will also discuss how management companies and non-government pension funds should look for the best deals available.

One of the key issues: how to raise investors income in the fiduciary duty environment.

The session is going to cover the issues of building risk management and internal control systems in management companies, non-government pension funds and professional securities market participants, related expenses, establishment of proportional legal requirements on risk management and internal control.

The session will cover possible transformations in the business models of management companies and pension funds in the era of low interest rates, changes in investment strategies and business optimisation.

The participants will discuss the existing types of asset management and the practices present in the market today, paying special attention to the international experience.

The discussion will also seek to dissect the essence of the standard management strategies to determine whether they constitute a product or a service.

The session will cover the transition from traditional reporting to collecting granular data, using the example of professional securities market participants.

What are the benefits for the professional securities market participants (e.g., reduction of reporting forms, decreasing number of the Bank of Russia requests)?

What are expected costs and risks (including information security risks)? Is it possible to transfer the data through cloud infrastructure? How should the regulation be adapted for new conditions?

Financial intermediaries have traditionally helped investors enter financial markets, so they can also be instrumental in developing “socially responsible” investments in Russia.

This primarily concerns asset managers and investment advisors, who play an important role in investment decisions.

The session will review the capacity of professional securities market participants and infrastructure institutions with regard to promoting sustainable/ESG-friendly investments (i.e. investing that is mindful of environmental, social and corporate governance concerns.) and potential risks concerning observance of such principles.

The participants will discuss legislative amendments with respect to microfinance organizations market “socialization”, PTI ratio market players experience, business models transformation – lenders structure changes analysis, the institution of the “financial ombudsman” established by market players for their own needs as well as new microfinance products and technologies development.

The discussion will cover microfinance market online sector development which is considered to foster growth of the market.

Participants will share their opinions on online sector challenges emerging as online sales channels are expanding and provide proximate solutions aimed at facing such challenges.

Such microfinance organizations market development problems as level of online default debt, anti-fraud issues and technologies development aimed at lenders and creditors risk lessening shall be paid attention to. The discussion is considered to cover online microfinance organizations role in financial inclusion endurance.

The discussion will cover the establishment and development of the monitoring mechanisms for self-regulating organizations, the market’s own capacities in terms of facing unfair practices and unfair market players , practical aspects of self-regulating organizations activity and their interaction with market players and regulation amendments in the area.