Secrecy laws which stop the central bank revealing the name of financial institutions clash with the current trend towards openness and transparency, central bank president Nout Wellink says in the latest issue of the central bank magazine.

Every time the central bank is forced to apply the secrecy laws, people think it is keeping something back, Wellink said: ‘That is not good for trust in the financial sector or the regulatory system.’
Nevertheless, this does not mean the bank could speak out if it is concerned about a given bank, Wellink said.
‘This would be the same as calling on everyone to take out their money. You can guess what that would mean for the bank,’ the bank president said.