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s however, equity markets started playing an important role. Other markets such as the medium to long-term debt market and short term money market remained relatively segmented and underdeveloped. In the past decades, the Government and its subsidiary institutions and agencies had an overwhelming and all encompassing role with extensive system of controls, rules, regulations and procedures, which directly or indirectly affected the development of these markets.

The financial system comprising of a network of institutions, instruments and markets suffered from lack of flexibility in intermediary behaviour and segmentation of various markets and sets of financial intermediaries. Well developed markets should be inter-connected to facilitate the demand-supply imbalances in one market overflowing into related markets thereby dampening shocks and disturbances. The inter connection also ensures that interest rates and returns in any market reflect the broad demand-supply conditions in the overall market of savings. But such adjustment of interest rates is delayed when the intermediaries lack flexibility. On account of the historical role of the

Government in controlling and directing a large part of the financial activity, such adjustments were slow and the problem needed to be addressed urgently if the financial sector had to keep pace with the reforms in the real sector.

PEST ANALYSIS

POLITICAL FACTORS

Recent cross-country investigations of the role of institutional fundamentals, such as the protection of property rights, in promoting financial development have extended a literature that has for decades maintained that financial factors can affect real outcomes. In this article we pursue this new direction by considering relationships between finance, growth, legal origin, and the political environment in a historical cross-section of 17 countries covering the period from 1880 to 1997. We find that relationships between a country's legal origin (such as English, French, German, or Scandinavian) and financial development are for the most part consistent with earlier findings but are not persistent. At the same time, political variables such as proportional representation election systems, frequent elections, universal female suffrage, and infrequent revolutions or coups seem linked to larger financial sectors and higher conditional rates of economic growth. Despite the explanatory power of some of our measures of the deeper fundamentals, however, a significant part of the growth-enhancing role of financial development remains unexplained by them.

TECNOLOGICAL FACTOR

nnovation has already transformed the financial services (FS) industry. Fourteen years ago, who expected the massive growth of e-banking and e-brokerage? Who envisioned the entry of new players such as retailers and telecommunications providers into financial services arena thanks to their ability to harness the power of innovative technology? Who predicted that technology would enable outsourcing and offshore contracting of core financial processes in lowcost countries such as India?

The business environment continues to change today, and the financial services sector needs to confront many issues to remain competitive. In particular, technology and innovation are board level issues; they create opportunities and pose threats.

To explore these issues, the Worl