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Several reforms improving banking and financial market regulation as well as supervision have been put through since summer 2013.

Shadow banking is a broad concept. A possible definition is that it comprises non-bank institutions which undertake bank-like activities. Another characteristic is that the sector is overall less regulated.

The existence of a lower bound for nominal interest rates complicates the monetary policy. Central banks have lately tried to circumvent this problem by applying non-standard monetary policy measures.

In exceptional circumstances, Eurosystem central banks can also grant credit to banks outside monetary policy operations.