Eva Hüpkes, Secretary General, International Association of Deposit Insurers.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues and dear friends,

When I first saw the name of our venue, I paused for a moment. A conference on financial safety nets, held in a hotel called Titanic. And on 29 October, the day Wall Street crashed 97 years ago, remembered as Black Tuesday. That takes a certain confidence. I would say it is the kind of confidence only deposit insurers could have.

I am pleased to report that, after a full day on board, we are all still afloat. Nobody has had to look for a lifeboat. And, unlike on the original, there were enough seats for everyone.

It is a particular pleasure to welcome colleagues from every region of the world to my home country, Germany. Thank you for coming to Berlin.

We set ourselves an ambitious programme this morning, and we have kept to it. We began with the most basic question: what is a deposit? We soon discovered that, in a digital world, the answer is far less simple than it seems.

Thank you to our speakers and to all of you. A day like this depends on people who are willing to share their thinking, and we have been fortunate in that respect.

I would like to thank our President, Alejandro López, for opening the day. I also thank our four keynote speakers, who gave us perspectives from the central bank, supervision, the European level and resolution.

My thanks go to our moderators for steering the discussions, and to every panellist for the openness and depth they brought. You came from central banks, supervisory authorities, resolution authorities, deposit insurers, international institutions and the industry. That breadth is exactly what this subject requires.

Finally, I thank all of you in this room. A conference is only as good as its audience, and this audience has been very good indeed.

None of this would have happened without our hosts: the Compensation Scheme of German Private Banks and the Deposit Protection Fund of the Association of German Banks.

A conference looks effortless only because a great deal of work has gone into it long before the first guest arrives. Hilmar Zettler, Martin Boegl and their teams have taken care of every detail, from the programme and the venue to the registration desk and the coffee. They have done so with great professionalism and warmth. Please join me in thanking them.

I would also like to thank my colleagues in the IADI Secretariat, Pegah, Juan, Taurai, Sungbae and Momoko, who have worked closely with our hosts over many months to prepare for this event.

This conference is not the end of our week in Berlin. Tomorrow, our members will meet for the 25th Annual General Meeting of IADI. Many of today’s themes will return there as matters for decision. I look forward to seeing our members again in the morning.

The number 25 brings me to one more announcement. Next year, IADI will celebrate its 25th anniversary. We will mark the occasion in Basel, the home of IADI since its founding. We very much hope to welcome many of you there, to look back together on a quarter of a century of cooperation among deposit insurers.

It is now my pleasure to hand over to Martin Boegl, Managing Director of the Compensation Scheme of German Private Banks, for his closing words.