SEACEN Podcast

It's a new year and the SEACEN Podcast starts our latest season with a brand new episode. Dr. Ole Rummel speaks with Dr. Rogelio Mercado to discuss the re-issued SEACEN Capital Flows Monitor, which is now available in the SEACEN ⁠website⁠. They discussed the impact of high U.S. and domestic policy rates on capital flows to Asia, as well as the latest trends and patterns of the region's capital flows and external positions.

Ole and Mark are back, this time discussing the biggest news of the past few days: the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a major financier for venture capitalists, tech start-ups and other Silicon Valley outfits, the federal government's response, and possible early lessons, if any, for SEACEN's stakeholders. Disclaimer:The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of The SEACEN Centre.

It's the first episode of a brand new season in 2023, and Mark McKenzie and Ole Rummel are joined by Prof. Leef Dierks, a guest to the Centre under the Visiting Scholar Programme. He is Professor of International Capital Markets at the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences. Prior to joining the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences in July 2013, Leef was a Fixed Income Strategist at Barclays Capital and then Head of Covered Bond Strategy at Morgan Stanley. In this episode, our hosts and Prof. Dierks talk about trust in Economic Policymaking and implications for the current situation, monetary policy transmission, the pitfalls and benefits of various inflation measures and discuss the Sacrifice Ratio.

Mark McKenzie and Ole Rummel are joined by Prof. Hans Genberg, Professor of Economics at the Asia School of Business, and Prof. Steven Cecchetti, who is the Rosen Chair in International Finance at the Brandeis International Business School as they discuss inflationary outlooks around the world, energy prices, and discuss the global economic impact of latest world events.

Mark McKenzie and Ole Rummel are back on air, ahead of a special webinar on the same topic coming up on 25 March 2022. Mark and Ole explore the potential for digital assets and cryptocurrencies to lessen the impact of sanctions and provide food for thought on steps that SEACEN members and stakeholders can take to scrutinize the use of digital assets. Some key questions:

Dr. Mangal Goswami, Executive Director of the SEACEN Centre, talks to former Governor Már Guðmundsson about Iceland’s crisis and recovery and the lessons learned. More generally they discuss the challenges facing central banks in small, open and financially integrated economies (SOFIES) due to cross-border financial integration and volatile capital flows. Preserving monetary and financial stability in SOFIES requires more instruments than generally deployed before the great financial crisis (GFC), such as foreign exchange interventions, macroprudential tools and capital flow management tools, that in turn gives rise to the need to develop an integrated policy framework. Finally, they discuss to what degree these lessons are relevant in the current crisis. The views of former Governor Már Guðmundsson on these issues are shaped by his terms at the Central Bank of Iceland from August 2009 to August 2019 but also by his work at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) as the Deputy Head of its Monetary and Economic Department from 2004-2009. He was a chairman of a regular meeting at the BIS of Governors from small open economies 2017-2019.

On 3 April, Özer and Ole spoke to Matteo Maggiori, Associate Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, about his research with Antonio Coppola (Harvard University), Brent Neiman (University of Chicago) and Jesse Schreger (Columbia University) on international capital movements (www.globalcapitalallocation.com) . Their aim was to shed light on how capital moves around the world. After painstaking data collection and careful analysis, the results present challenges to current orthodoxy. While official statistics capture the aggregate amount of cross-border capital flows, accounting for the ultimate nationality of the borrower rather than the location of the intermediary that does the borrowing matters considerably. For example, capital flows to emerging market economies according to their calculation are much bigger than previously thought. We discussed this point as well as some other implications of their findings.

In this Podcast, Geraldine Joseph, SEACEN Centre Senior Analyst, has a conversation with Professor Dr. Didier Cossin, founder and director of the Global Board Centre of the International Institute for Management Department (IMD), Switzerland, and Professor of Finance and Governance at IMD. Professor Cossin is the originator of the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness methodology and an advocate of Stewardship. In his work with Boards of both public- and private-sector organisations across the world, Professor Cossin helps them enhance organisational performance through strategy involvement; best-in-class decision-making; promotion of board culture; and general governance, including board restructuring. Over the course of this conversation, he will be sharing his perspectives for effective central bank governance, based on his very own 4-pillar framework.

In this SEACEN STEP UP TO LEAD Podcast, Geraldine Joseph, SEACEN Centre Senior Analyst, engages with Mr. Rajeev Peshawaria, former Executive Director of Executive Education, Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur, who completed his term at end-March 2020. Rajeev’s prior professional experience includes being the CEO of the Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre, Kuala Lumpur, and the Chief Learning Officer for both Coca Cola and Morgan Stanley. Apart from being a heavily sought-after international speaker, he is the author of two thought-provoking best sellers: Open Source Leadership; and Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders. Rajeev has been named as one of the Top 100 Global Thought Leaders for Trustworthy Business by Trust Across America. In this podcast, Rajeev shares his nuggets of wisdom on what it takes to lead effectively, based on his profound experience as a leadership development consultant and a C-suite leader in a number of organisations.

In this SEACEN Podcast, Glenn Tasky, Aziz Durrani and Mark McKenzie discuss COVID-19, financial stability and business continuity management (BCM) of central banks, stand-alone financial sector regulatory authorities, deposit insurance agencies (collectively, regulatory authorities), and financial institutions (FIs) themselves plays a central role.

In this episode, Mark is joined by Ole, Aziz Durrani, and Geraldine, all whom have been hosts of Season 2 episodes and they share insights from the podcast throughout 2019, and what they're each looking forward to in the year to come.

“BigTech” in the Financial Sector: More Choice for the Consumer, More Challenges for the Regulator? SEACEN financial sector supervision experts Mark McKenzie and Glenn Tasky talk with prolific writer and educator Professor Douglas Arner, Kerry Holdings Professor in Law and Co-Founder, Asian Institute of International Financial Law, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, about the entry of BigTech – companies such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba, and Tencent – into the provision of financial services such as lending, payments, and even exotic cross-border instruments such as stablecoins. What are the benefits these big players bring, and what are the risks of allowing firms that are already big in other markets potentially dominate banking as well?

In this special episode in our "Step Up to Lead" series, SEACEN Faculty member from the Leadership and Governance Pillar, Ms. Geraldine Joseph speaks with the former Executive Director of the Centre, Dr Hans Genberg, who is now with the Asia School of Business in Kuala Lumpur.

In this episode, Aziz Durrani speaks to Mr. Findlay Macpherson, who was most recently Head of Commercial Real Estate, Asia Pacific at HSBC and is an ex-Senior Technical Specialist from the Bank of England. Findlay has had a long career in banking, having lived and worked in South Africa, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong. Findlay discusses the Commercial Real Estate market across Asia, and risks and issues inherent in this business, as CRE exposures often result in losses and subsequent bank failures if undertaken incorrectly. Findlay also draws on his banking and regulatory experience and talks about how Central Banks and Regulators can effectively supervise institutions in the current climate, as they implement Risk Based Supervision, Basel III, IFRS 9 and deal with a range of other challenges.

In this episode, Aziz Durrani is in conversation with Mr. Philip Stedman, CEO of Snoocode and Managing Director of Stedman Denny. Phil was previously a senior Technical Specialist at the Bank of England, where he worked alongside Aziz for 6 years, following the 2007/8 Financial Crisis. They discuss Phil’s background and expertise in emerging markets and talk about the key lessons he has learned from analysing corporate transactions and lending structures in developing economies, issues around identifying non-performing loans, how to challenge banks’ senior management and lessons and guidance Supervisors can draw from this in their day-today role.

In the run-up to the SEACEN Centre’s Policy Summit on Cyber Risk, held on 13-14 June 2019, Aziz Durrani, Senior Financial Sector Specialist at the SEACEN Centre, caught up with Malik Kotadia, one of the panellists at the summit. They discuss some of the key developments, issues and risks in the FinTech, cryptocurrency and blockchain world, as well as how banks and regulators should be responding to them.

In this Podcast, Glenn Tasky, SEACEN’s Director of Financial Stability and Supervision / Payment and Settlement Systems, interviews Stephen Scott and Jeff Kupfer of Starling Trust Sciences, LLC. Starling is a behavioural sciences company that utilizes technology to assist in the evaluation of culture of organizations, including banks and other financial institutions. These evaluations can reveal deficiencies in a bank’s culture that may point to heightened misconduct risk. The Starling executives discuss the most prominent and most recent banking scandals, and emphasize that culture within a bank (or any firm) is contagious, and both executives and employees take their cues from their peers – not necessarily from laws, regulations, and best practices – in deciding on a course of action.

In this 2nd episode in our series on Cybersecurity, Dr. Ole Rummel and Mr. Mark McKenzie spoke with Puan Jessica Chew, Deputy Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia responsible for financial stability which covers the regulation and supervision of banks, insurance companies, payment systems and money services. The main subject of this conversation is cyber risks and financial stability. It was recorded as part of our lead up to the SEACEN Centre's Annual Policy Summit on Central Bank Leadership in Combating Cyber Risk in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 13 -14 June 2019.

Dr Ole Rummel interviews Glenn Tasky, Director of the Financial Stability and Supervision/Payment and Settlement Systems pillar of the Centre about issues in Cybersecurity and Central Banking. This is part 1of 2 podcasts which lead up to the SEACEN Centre's Annual Policy Summit to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 13 and 14 June 2019.

In this episode, Dr Hans Genberg, the Centre's Executive Director, speaks to Grant Spencer, Former Governor of the New Zealand Reserve Bank on the above and his experiences as a senior central banker.