The key findings of Australia’s BASEL II implementation assessment are presented. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) allocated sufficient resources, including highly skilled staff, prior to the Basel II start date, and the outcome has been a robust and high-quality...

In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries. Each report, prepared by a staff team after discussions with government officials, is published at the option of the member country.

This paper presents Detailed Assessment of the United States’s observance of Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision. The U.S. financial system is large and highly diversified. At the end-2007, total U.S. financial assets amounted to almost four and a half times the size...

This paper presents a technical note on Mexico’s Financial Sector Assessment Program update. The Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal has successfully led a range of direct policy measures that have stimulated the development of the housing finance market. The government improved the legal...

This technical note discusses key findings of the assessment of Insurance Core Principles (ICP) for the reinsurance industry for Switzerland. It reveals that the Swiss reinsurance market is dominated by three large players with a strong international presence. The reinsurance industry comprises...

Insurance regulation in South Africa is sound and takes a thorough approach to regulation, recognizes the scale and development of the market, and the need for effective market conduct as prudential regulation. There are particular challenges in improving standards of market conduct, in both...

In today's financial system, complex financial institutions are connected through an opaque network of financial exposures. These connections contribute to financial deepening and greater savings allocation efficiency, but are also unstable channels of contagion. Basel III and Solvency II should...

Insurance regulation and supervision is of a high standard, and most of the enhancements suggested have been put in place. Further enhancements will be required, in the context of the forthcoming introduction of Solvency II requirements, in such areas as the frequency of onsite inspections, the...

This Technical Note analyzes impaired loans in Poland. Asset quality has moved up the Polish supervisor’s agenda to address persistent impaired loans and cyclical deterioration in credit quality. Although the deterioration has been mainly observed in the quality of consumer loan...