Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Cyril Roux:

I couldn't agree more with you. I think we are all discussing here credit risk linked to mortgages and real estate, but there are lots of other risks that could hit us. The biggest one is interest rate risks. If interest rates go up by 3% or 4%, what is going to happen to households, to mortgage holders, to the firms? This is a very serious issue? It is a very different issue than the one we are talking about. This is maybe the main risk, because experience is that when interest rates rise they rise very quickly and very much. That's one risk. Another risk is cyber risk. We are quite concerned. All banks experience, every day, attacks on their system. One day they will ... they will go through and they are determined attempts to take down the European payment system or settlement system or banking system. So these are very different risks and they're very alive and they're quite different from those of the past and the way to address them are quite different as well.