Capability Brief

Banks, Insurers & Systemic Institutions

Banks, insurers and systemic institutions covers the financial institutions themselves rather than the rails and venues they use, including systemically important banks, insurers, pension and social insurance funds, sovereign wealth and development finance institutions, and deposit guarantee bodies.

Hard Power Strategic Infrastructure Financial Infrastructure

Indicators: 3
Leaders: 10placeholder ratings
Like it: 8capabilities
Developments: 21

Definition

What Banks, Insurers & Systemic Institutions is, and how it is measured

Indicators

Designated systemically important institutions
Banking system assets to GDP
Concentration of deposits in the largest institutions

Leaders

The nations that lead in Banks, Insurers & Systemic Institutions

Placeholder

These ratings stand in until the capability is rated.

#	Nation	Rating
1	Japan	AAA
2	Germany	AA
3	South Korea	AA
4	Israel	A
5	Singapore	A
6	Australia	A
7	United States	BBB
8	Italy	BBB
9	India	BB
10	Netherlands	BB

The capabilities most like Banks, Insurers & Systemic Institutions

Likeness, from 0 to 1, as the Atlas measures it.

Developments

How Banks, Insurers & Systemic Institutions came to be

Governance
Economy

Historical Developments

Oldest first

2008
International community moved to protect the global financial system by preventing the failure of SIFIs
As the financial crisis unfolded, policymakers internationally shifted towards identifying institutions whose failure could trigger systemic collapse and limiting the damage if one did fail. This gave rise to the whole apparatus of systemically important financial institution designation. The colloquial phrase 'too big to fail' became a policy problem to be solved.
2009
US top-tier bank holding companies became subject to regular supervisory stress testing
Stress testing of the largest US banking groups began in the immediate aftermath of the crisis and became a recurring supervisory tool. It established quantitative capital adequacy assessment as a core feature of systemic bank oversight.
2010
US Congress passed the Dodd–Frank Act creating the Financial Stability Oversight Council
Title I of the Act established the Financial Stability Oversight Council and set criteria for designating non-bank financial companies as systemically important. Section 165(d) also imposed resolution planning requirements on large bank holding companies, complementing separate FDIC requirements for covered insured depository institutions.
November 2010
Basel Committee on Banking Supervision introduced Basel III guidance targeting systemically important institutions
The new guidance raised bank capital requirements generally and introduced capital surcharges specifically for global systemically important financial institutions. It became the reference standard that national regulators would selectively implement, since the BCBS has no direct legal force.
2011
Mark Carney wrote the FSB report that coined the term G-SIFI
The FSB hired Carney to produce the report because identifying systemic significance from a global vantage point differs from any single country's assessment. The terminology it introduced structured subsequent international supervision of large financial groups.
2011
Basel Committee on Banking Supervision finalised the G-SIB capital surcharge framework
The framework set out additional capital buffers to be held by global systemically important banks according to their systemic footprint. National authorities later implemented it with varying calibrations, in some cases producing higher surcharges than the international baseline.
2011
Dexia passed European stress tests then sought a €90 billion bailout guarantee two months later
The Franco-Belgian bank's collapse shortly after clearing the European stress tests became a standing example of the limits of such exercises. The episode fed arguments that risk-weighted capital regulation could understate fragility.
November 2011
Financial Stability Board published the first list of global systemically important financial institutions
The FSB's G-SIFI paper named the institutions whose failure would threaten the global system, creating a formal international register for the first time. No standard definition of a national SIFI had been agreed at that point, leaving domestic designation to individual countries.
2012
Economists warned that Basel III risk-weighted capital rules could destabilise the system
Critics argued that tighter capital regulation based primarily on risk-weighted assets might have perverse effects on overall financial stability. Related proposals, such as Equity Recourse Notes to replace unsecured non-deposit debt at SIFIs, were advanced as counter-cyclical alternatives.
2013
Treasury Department's Office of Financial Research reported that asset management is systemically important
The report on Asset Management and Financial Stability concluded that the industry's activities as a whole could pose risks to US financial stability. It prepared the ground for arguments that large asset managers should be designated non-bank SIFIs.
2014
Financial Stability Oversight Council designated MetLife as systemically important
The United States' largest life insurer was brought under enhanced federal supervision as a non-bank SIFI. MetLife challenged the designation in federal court as arbitrary and capricious, opening the central legal test of non-bank designation powers.

Recent Developments

Most recent first

November 2025
Financial Stability Board updated the list of global systemically important banks to 29 institutions
The revised list comprised eight banks in the United States, seven in the European Union, five in China, three each in the United Kingdom and Japan, two in Canada and one in Switzerland. The distribution reflects where the world's most systemically consequential banking groups are domiciled.
2019
International Association of Insurance Supervisors set higher loss absorbency requirements to apply from 2019
The HLA methodology, developed for publication by end-2015, was to apply from January 2019 to the G-SIIs identified in November 2017. From that date all G-SIIs were required to hold capital no lower than the Basic Capital Requirements plus HLA.
January 2018
US Court of Appeals dropped the MetLife designation appeal at the administration's request
A panel of judges dismissed the appeal after the Financial Stability Oversight Council withdrew it at the request of the Trump administration. The district court decision against designation therefore stood, effectively ending the attempt to treat large insurers as non-bank SIFIs.
April 2016
Judge Rosemary Collyer struck down MetLife's SIFI designation in federal district court
The ruling found in MetLife's favour against the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and the insurer's share price rose sharply. It significantly weakened the practical reach of non-bank systemic designation in the United States.
November 2015
Financial Stability Board and IAIS revised the G-SII assessment methodology to cover major reinsurers
The methodology was finalised by the IAIS with the intention of extending global systemically important insurer status to the world's largest reinsurers, and was to be applied from 2016. In the same month Aegon replaced Assicurazioni Generali on the G-SII list.
January 2015
US Secretary of the Treasury proposed new recordkeeping requirements for qualified financial contracts
The notice of proposed rulemaking targeted documentation of QFCs held by large financial institutions. Such records are needed to make orderly resolution of a failing systemic firm feasible.
December 2014
Federal Reserve Board proposed additional capital requirements for US G-SIBs
The proposal implemented the Basel Committee's G-SIB surcharge framework but altered the calculation methodology, producing markedly higher surcharges for US banks than for international peers. Observers expected finalisation in 2015.
October 2014
International Association of Insurance Supervisors published the first global insurance capital standard, Basic Capital Requirements
The BCR applied to all group activities of global systemically important insurers, including non-insurance business, and served as the foundation for later higher loss absorbency requirements. From 2015 the BCR ratio was reported confidentially to group-wide supervisors and shared with the IAIS for refinement.
2014
US regulators required large firms to file resolution plans in staged categories
Category 2 firms began submitting resolution plans while category 1 firms filed their third plans. The regime under Dodd–Frank section 165(d) ran alongside the FDIC's separate requirement for covered insured depository institutions above a $50 billion asset threshold.
2014
Financial Stability Board and IOSCO issued a consultative document on identifying systemically important investment funds
The document proposed methodologies for designating globally active investment funds as systemically important. It extended systemic designation work beyond banks and insurers into asset management.