Rules of thumb can be useful in undertaking quick, robust, and readily interpretable bank stress tests. Such rules of thumb are proposed for the behavior of banks’ capital ratios and key drivers thereof—primarily credit losses, income, credit growth, and risk weights—in advanced and emerging economies, under more or less severe stress conditions. The proposed rules imply disproportionate responses to large shocks, and can be used to quantify the cyclical behaviour of capital ratios under various regulatory approaches.

The global financial crisis has placed the spotlight squarely on bank stress tests. Stress tests conducted in the lead-up to the crisis, including those by IMF staff, were not always able to identify the right risks and vulnerabilities. Since then, IMF staff has developed more robust stress testing methods and models and adopted a more coherent and consistent approach. This paper articulates the solvency stress testing framework that is being applied in the IMF’s surveillance of member countries’ banking systems, and discusses examples of its actual implementation in FSAPs to 18 countries which are in the group comprising the 25 most systemically important financial systems (“S-25”) plus other G-20 countries. In doing so, the paper also offers useful guidance for readers seeking to develop their own stress testing frameworks and country authorities preparing for FSAPs. A detailed Stress Test Matrix (STeM) comparing the stress test parameters applie in each of these major country FSAPs is provided, together with our stress test output templates.

Rules of thumb can be useful in undertaking quick, robust, and readily interpretable bank stress tests. Such rules of thumb are proposed for the behavior of banks’ capital ratios and key drivers thereof—primarily credit losses, income, credit growth, and risk weights—in advanced and emerging economies, under more or less severe stress conditions. The proposed rules imply disproportionate responses to large shocks, and can be used to quantify the cyclical behaviour of capital ratios under various regulatory approaches.

This paper explains specifics of stress testing at the IMF. After a brief section on the evolution of stress tests at the IMF, the paper presents the key steps of an IMF staff stress test. They are followed by a discussion on how IMF staff uses stress tests results for policy advice. The paper concludes by identifying remaining challenges to make stress tests more useful for the monitoring of financial stability and an overview of IMF staff work program in that direction. Stress tests help assess the resilience of financial systems in IMF member countries and underpin policy advice to preserve or restore financial stability. This assessment and advice are mainly provided through the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). IMF staff also provide technical assistance in stress testing to many its member countries. An IMF macroprudential stress test is a methodology to assess financial vulnerabilities that can trigger systemic risk and the need of systemwide mitigating measures. The definition of systemic risk as used by the IMF is relevant to understanding the role of its stress tests as tools for financial surveillance and the IMF’s current work program. IMF stress tests primarily apply to depository intermediaries, and, systemically important banks.

Credibility is the bedrock of any crisis stress test. The use of stress tests to manage systemic risk was introduced by the U.S. authorities in 2009 in the form of the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program. Since then, supervisory authorities in other jurisdictions have also conducted similar exercises. In some of those cases, the design and implementation of certainelements of the framework have been criticized for their lack of credibility. This paper proposes a set of guidelines for constructing an effective crisis stress test. It combines financial markets impact studies of previous exercises with relevant case study information gleaned from those experiences to identify the key elements and to formulate their appropriate design. Pertinent concepts, issues and nuances particular to crisis stress testing are also discussed. The findings may be useful for country authorities seeking to include stress tests in their crisis management arsenal, as well as for the design of crisis programs.

Over the last decade, stress testing has become a central aspect of the Fund’s bilateral and multilateral surveillance work. Recently, more emphasis has also been placed on the role of insurance for financial stability analysis. This paper reviews the current state of system-wide solvency stress tests for insurance based on a comparative review of national practices and the experiences from Fund’s FSAP program with the aim of providing practical guidelines for the coherent and consistent implementation of such exercises. The paper also offers recommendations on improving the current insurance stress testing approaches and presentation of results.

This paper presents new evidence on the empirical relationship between bank solvency and funding costs. Building on a newly constructed dataset drawing on supervisory data for 54 large banks from six advanced countries over 2004–2013, we use a simultaneous equation approach to estimate the contemporaneous interaction between solvency and liquidity. Our results show that liquidity and solvency interactions can be more material than suggested by the existing empirical literature. A 100 bps increase in regulatory capital ratios is associated with a decrease of bank funding costs of about 105 bps. A 100 bps increase in funding costs reduces regulatory capital buffers by 32 bps. We also find evidence of non-linear effects between solvency and funding costs. Understanding the impact of solvency on funding costs is particularly relevant for stress testing. Our analysis suggests that neglecting the dynamic features of the solvency-liquidity nexus in the 2014 EU-wide stress test could have led to a significant underestimation of the impact of stress on bank capital ratios.