SNB's Tschudin says Swiss inflation is slightly higher than it was in June

Off-meeting remarks from an SNB governing board member tend to sit within the bank's established practice of speaking in a fairly unified voice, so the weight attaches less to the individual than to whether the framing echoes the last policy assessment. Swiss policy has historically been set with one eye on the franc: inflation running slightly above a prior reference point narrows the case for further easing and reduces the urgency of the FX lever, which the SNB has used alongside, and at times instead of, the policy rate when imported disinflation threatened. The relevant distinction is between a mild uptick consistent with the conditional forecast and one that challenges the projected path, since the former leaves the rate corridor intact while the latter reopens questions the SNB has usually preferred to settle at quarterly meetings rather than between them. Precedent is that single comments of this kind move the short end and the franc only modestly unless they signal a shift in the inflation forecast that underpins the easing bias. The follow-ons are the next official inflation print, any change in language around the exchange rate, and whether other board members repeat the characterisation ahead of the next assessment.