Meraj Allahrakha and Brian Kwok Chung Yee from the Financial Institutions Division of the IMF Statistics Department discussed the new IMF 2019 Financial Soundness Indicators Compilation Guide (2019 FSI Guide).

In the late 1990s, the IMF launched an ambitious data collection effort to monitor the soundness of the global financial system. The global financial crisis revealed the need to enhance this and other financial sector data collection initiatives and close important data gaps. This included, for instance, supplementing them with tail risk and macroeconomic conditions measures in order to strengthen macro-financial surveillance. The 2019 FSI Guide updates the methodological guidance on the concepts and definitions, data sources and methods for compiling and disseminating financial soundness indicators.

This webinar reviewed the main methodological changes brought about by the 2019 FSI Guide for compiling FSIs for deposit-takers, other financial corporations, and the real sector. Specifically, the 2019 Guide is more prescriptive than previous methodology in order to improve cross-country comparability; it reflects recent changes in regulatory and accounting standards; and includes a new Concentration and Distribution Measures (CDM) template. The webinar also covered new FSI reporting forms related to the expanded coverage of the financial sector, including other financial intermediaries, money market funds, insurance corporations, pension funds, nonfinancial corporations, and households, as well as plans for the migration of historic data and metadata to the new reporting forms.

Rilind Kabashi, Economist, JVI