Against the background of fragile economic recovery and slowing growth in emerging markets in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the focus of policy-makers and regulators is shifting from fixing the causes of the last crisis to stimulating growth. While the banking sector has been deleveraging after the crisis and grappling with new regulatory requirements worldwide, its ability to fund the real economy and promote growth is becoming constrained. Tightening fiscal constraints have also reduced the ability of the public sector to fund policies favoring growth and jobs. Traditional bank intermediation is still important but technological changes seem to enable a shift to market-based, non-traditional financing models worldwide.

Market-based finance promises to provide healthy competition for banks and offers new sources for financing economic expansion. The challenges in developing and supporting capital markets differ from region to region. For example, the US needs to attract global savings and investment to the US public markets, especially at a time of increasing capital markets competition. Europe, by contrast, seeks to diversify beyond bank financing by channeling domestic savings toward local growth projects and to increase reliance on equity over debt. Emerging markets seek to create regulatory structures that can channel domestic savings into sound local products and projects, and attract foreign investment without exposing local markets to "sudden stops" in investment which can imperil growth and stability. Alongside these differing regional objectives, the globalization of capital markets calls for a new supervisory and regulatory community at the international level. Markets are attractive to investors in proportion to their transparency, stability and liquidity. These three factors require a regulatory framework for participants and the market itself that deliver reasonable predictable results. Fintech is also changing the face of the financial industry. It has already started transforming banking in mobile payments, peer-to-peer lending and other areas, and is likely to have a profound impact on capital markets as well.

The 6th Salzburg Forum on Global Finance in a Changing World will explore how banks, non-bank intermediaries and markets all contribute to the sound functioning of the global economy. It will evaluate current approaches to strengthening recovery and examine the shift to market-based financing. It will also examine the increase in electronic trading and use of high speed algorithms. It will identify preconditions for strong and stable capital markets, necessary policies to support their development, and methods of managing associated risks.

The Forum brought together policymakers; regulators and supervisors (in particular securities regulators); financial services firms and alternative financial intermediaries; consultants and academics.