Guidelines for the Successful Regional Integration of Financial Infrastructures

Abstract

Over the past decade or so, the
 prospects of long term economic, institutional and social
 gains from regional and global financial and trade
 liberalization have become more appealing to public and
 private stakeholders. Indeed, since the late 1980’s both
 developing and advanced economies have seen greater levels
 of cross-border banking and the cross-border trading,
 issuance and investment in securities and financial
 derivatives. At the same time, recent events like the global
 financial crisis that emerged in 2008 have prompted market
 participants, their supervisors and other national
 authorities, international organizations and standard
 setting bodies to support more robust and ultimately
 effective mechanisms to enable cross-border financial market
 connectivity and liquidity, for the benefit of overall
 financial stability and also of the final users of
 cross-border financial services.The guidelines are designed
 to correspond to themain public and private sector
 objectives for financial market and infrastructure
 integration, and to facilitate stakeholder realization of
 the main benefits that are typically associated with FI
 integration. The guidelines also address commonly
 experienced barriers and challenges to efficient, effective
 and safe regional financial infrastructure integration, in
 order to improve accessibility and reachability for
 customers and to help minimize the various costs and risks
 often associated with integration efforts like these.