Macroprudential & Systemic Oversight

1397 · 629 years ago

The Medici Bank pioneered the practices that underpinned early modern banking stability

Founded in Florence, it built double-entry bookkeeping and a network of correspondent branches across Europe, spreading credit risk and setting standards of record-keeping that later banking systems relied upon.

1694 · 332 years ago

The Bank of England was founded to stabilise state finance and the currency

Chartered to fund government borrowing during war with France, it became the model for a national bank underpinning system-wide confidence, later formalising the role of lender of last resort.

1907 · 119 years ago

The Panic of 1907 showed the United States had no lender of last resort

A New York trust company crisis triggered runs across the banking system, contained only by private intervention led by J.P. Morgan, and the episode became the direct catalyst for creating the Federal Reserve.

1933 · 93 years ago

The US Banking Act created federal deposit insurance and separated commercial from investment banking

Passed after thousands of bank failures during the Depression, the act established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Glass-Steagall wall between deposit-taking and securities business, a model later copied elsewhere.

1974 · 52 years ago

The failure of Herstatt Bank in Germany prompted the founding of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision

Losses from the bank's collapse spread through the international payments system in a single afternoon, pushing the G10 central banks to establish permanent machinery for cross-border bank supervisory cooperation.

1982 · 44 years ago

Mexico's default on its external debt triggered the Latin American debt crisis

Sovereign default spread across Argentina, Brazil and other borrowers, leaving major international banks badly exposed and prompting years of restructuring that culminated in Brady bonds and new approaches to sovereign risk.

1988 · 38 years ago

The Basel Committee agreed the first international bank capital standard

The Basel I Accord set a minimum ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets for internationally active banks, giving supervisors a common yardstick and beginning four decades of increasingly detailed capital regulation.

1997 · 29 years ago

The Asian financial crisis exposed weak bank supervision across the region

A currency collapse beginning with the Thai baht spread through Indonesia and South Korea, forcing bank closures, nationalisations and IMF-led recapitalisation programmes that reshaped banking supervision across East and Southeast Asia.

• The IMF attached bank restructuring conditions to rescue loans

2008 · 18 years ago

The collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered a global financial crisis

The bankruptcy froze interbank lending worldwide and forced state rescues of major banks in the United States and Europe, prompting the most significant rewrite of bank capital and liquidity rules in modern history.

• Governments worldwide committed trillions of dollars to bank rescues

2023 · 3 years ago

Credit Suisse and three US regional lenders collapsed within the space of weeks

Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic failed in the United States while Credit Suisse was taken over by UBS, the most serious test of bank confidence since 2008 and a reminder that deposit flight could now move at social-media speed.

April 2026 · 4 months ago

The International Monetary Fund issued guidance on Pillar 2 capital buffer assessments

A technical note set out methods for supervisors to judge additional capital charges on individual banks, part of continuing work to standardise macroprudential buffer practice across member states.

April 2026 · 4 months ago

The Federal Reserve flagged a sharp rise in bank credit default swap spreads

Spreads on the biggest US banks fell to their lowest since 2015 at the end of 2025 before jumping in March and April, a signal of renewed uncertainty even though stress tests showed capital buffers remained robust.

• Bank lenders tightened underwriting standards

April 2026 · 4 months ago

Gulf governments injected $53 billion into GCC banking systems in the first quarter

Saudi Arabia and the UAE led the increase, which continued with a further $21 billion in April, as liquid assets held at around 20 per cent of regional bank balance sheets and deposit growth outpaced lending.

• The 50 largest GCC banks held an average Tier 1 ratio of about 17 per cent

March 2026 · 5 months ago

Indonesia's Financial Services Authority pressed ahead with inclusion-focused reform as bank capital ratios stayed high

Indonesia's banking capital adequacy ratio stood at 25.1 per cent in March, among the strongest in Southeast Asia, giving the regulator room to pursue reform alongside continued prudential tightening.

March 2026 · 5 months ago

The Central Bank of Nigeria completed a ₦4.65 trillion bank recapitalisation programme

The 24-month programme drew fresh capital from 33 banks, with just over 72 per cent sourced domestically and the rest from international investors, before regulators moved to risk-based supervision.

• The Central Bank of Nigeria ordered lenders to run capital stress tests

January 2026 · 7 months ago

Credit rating agencies identified rising tail risks to global bank stability

Assessments pointed to growing risk from sovereign debt linkages, a fast-growing nonbank financial sector and new technology, even as core fundamentals in the banking system were judged broadly stable heading into the year.

2026 to date · this year

European banking supervisors moved to strengthen defences against conflict-related shocks

Supervisors stepped up preparations for banking-sector spillovers from escalating geopolitical conflicts, with European authorities expected to do the most among major regions to reinforce resilience during the year.

June 2025 · last year

The Reserve Bank of India reported that banks and non-bank lenders remained resilient

The central bank's Financial Stability Report found strong balance sheets across banks and non-bank financial companies, with capital and liquidity buffers comfortably above regulatory minimums despite external headwinds.

Early 2025 · last year

Chinese banking regulators sharply increased enforcement action against lenders

Authorities issued 1,466 penalties worth RMB485 million to banks in the first quarter, a 20.1 per cent rise on the previous quarter, as supervisors intensified scrutiny of governance and lending practices.

2024 · 2 years ago

Chinese commercial banks posted profit growth of just 0.5 per cent

Commercial banks recorded RMB1.87 trillion in combined net profit in the third quarter, up 0.5 per cent year on year, as margin compression continued to weigh on the sector's earnings.