The global financial system is still in a period of significant uncertainty. Although the ongoing recovery is expected to gradual strengthen balance sheets, progress toward stability has experienced a setback since the April 2010 GFSR. As discussed in this October 2010 report, policymakers in many advanced countries need to confront the interactions created by slow growth, rising sovereign indebtedness, and still fragile financial institutions by addressing legacy problems in the banking system, strengthening the fundamentals of sovereign and bank balance sheets, and clarifying regulatory reforms.

The global financial system is still in a period of significant uncertainty. Although the ongoing recovery is expected to gradual strengthen balance sheets, progress toward stability has experienced a setback since the April 2010 GFSR. As discussed in this October 2010 report, policymakers in many advanced countries need to confront the interactions created by slow growth, rising sovereign indebtedness, and still fragile financial institutions by addressing legacy problems in the banking system, strengthening the fundamentals of sovereign and bank balance sheets, and clarifying regulatory reforms.

The Global Financial Stability Report examines current risks facing the global financial system and policy actions that may mitigate these. It analyzes the key challenges facing financial and nonfinancial firms as they continue to repair their balance sheets. Chapter 2 takes a closer look at whether sovereign credit default swaps markets are good indicators of sovereign credit risk. Chapter 3 examines unconventional monetary policy in some depth, including the policies pursued by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, and the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Financial stability risks have been contained so far, reflecting ongoing policy support and a rebound in the global economy earlier this year. Chapter 1 explains that financial conditions have eased further in net in advanced economies but changed little in emerging markets. However, the optimism that propelled markets earlier in the year has faded on growing concerns about the strength of the global recovery, and ongoing supply chain disruptions intensified inflation concerns. Signs of stretched asset valuations in some market segments persist, and pockets of vulnerabilities remain in the nonbank financial sector; recovery is uneven in the corporate sector. Chapter 2 discusses the opportunities and challenges of the crypto ecosystem. Crypto asset providers’ lack of operational or cyber resilience poses risks, and significant data gaps imperil financial integrity. Crypto assets in emerging markets may accelerate dollarization risks. Chapter 3 shows that sustainable funds can support the global transition to a green economy but must be scaled up to have a major impact. It also discusses how a disorderly transition could disrupt the broader investment fund sector in the future.

The October 2019 Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) identifies the current key vulnerabilities in the global financial system as the rise in corporate debt burdens, increasing holdings of riskier and more illiquid assets by institutional investors, and growing reliance on external borrowing by emerging and frontier market economies. The report proposes that policymakers mitigate these risks through stricter supervisory and macroprudential oversight of firms, strengthened oversight and disclosure for institutional investors, and the implementation of prudent sovereign debt management practices and frameworks for emerging and frontier market economies.

The October 2017 Global Financial Stability Report finds that the global financial system continues to strengthen in response to extraordinary policy support, regulatory enhancements, and the cyclical upturn in growth. It also includes a chapter that examines the short- and medium-term implications for economic growth and financial stability of the past decades’ rise in household debt. It documents large differences in household debt-to-GDP ratios across countries but a common increasing trajectory that was moderated but not reversed by the global financial crisis. Another chapter develops a new macroeconomic measure of financial stability by linking financial conditions to the probability distribution of future GDP growth and applies it to a set of 20 major advanced and emerging market economies. The chapter shows that changes in financial conditions shift the whole distribution of future GDP growth.

In the 10 years since the global financial crisis, regulatory frameworks have been enhanced and the banking system has become stronger, but new vulnerabilities have emerged, and the resilience of the global financial system has yet to be tested.