During the spring of 2023, one Swiss bank and several US banks failed. Multiple actors in both the US and internationally have analysed the underlying causes. We summarise the findings of these reports as follows: there was a lack of internal governance and control, there were deficiencies in the supervision, and several of the banks were not fully subject to the Basel regulations.
FI has tested the effectiveness of 19 banks' automated sanction screening systems. The result shows that the effectiveness of the systems that the banks use could be higher and that there is room for some banks to improve their work in this area.
The new generative AI technology has spread rapidly and extensively throughout the Swedish financial sector. At the same time, the work to manage the risks accompanying the new technology is lagging behind. These are FI’s findings following a survey of firms’ use of AI.
The outlook for financial stability has improved somewhat in the past six months. Sweden continues to experience a mild economic downturn, but interest rate cuts are contributing to improved optimism about the future. At the same time, the uncertain global economic and geopolitical situation is leading to heightened risks, in part in the form of cyber attacks. These are the conclusions of FI’s second stability report for the year.
An increasing number of consumers are falling victim to investment fraud. In a report to the Government, FI proposes, among other things, enhanced work to prevent investment fraud.
Amortisation requirements, the LTI ratio, and the LTV cap are macroprudential policy tools that are used in Sweden and many other countries. But what are the potential effects of these borrower-based measures? To answer to this question, Finansinspektionen commissioned two expert reports on the topic.
There are climate-related transition risks in Swedish banks’ lending portfolios. This is the conclusion of an analysis Finansinspektionen (FI) conducted by linking lending to individual firms to emissions data from firms that are included in the EU Emissions Trading System.
Fraud is a major and expanding societal problem that fosters organised crime. FI supervises that payment service providers follow the provisions set out in the Payment Services Act that aim to prevent fraud. Payment service providers do a lot to prevent their payments services from being used for fraud, but this problem is still growing.
Households continue to be under pressure from both higher interest rates and other costs. This is evident in FI’s mortgage report. The report looks at new mortgagors during the autumn of 2023. We can see that there are fewer mortgagors than in previous years. Home buyers also bought slightly less expensive homes and borrowed slightly less. Total lending to households has stagnated, but despite this household indebtedness continues to be high.
Many smaller, unlisted commercial real estate (CRE) firms have a high loan-to-value (LTV) ratio and a low interest coverage ratio (ICR). This makes them vulnerable to a scenario with high interest rates and lower earnings. A new FI Analysis concludes that, given such a scenario, smaller CRE firms would constitute the majority of banks’ real estate sector-related credit risks.