Hedge funds are collective investment vehicles, often organized as private partnerships and resident offshore for tax and regulatory purposes. Their legal status places few restrictions on their portfolios and transactions, leaving their managers free to use short sales, derivative securities,...

Moldova has made some important advances since the 2008 FSAP Update. On the positive side, inflation has been brought down to single digits, the payment system has been upgraded, and important enhancements have been made to financial sector regulation and supervision. However, risks to banking...

The National Bank of Moldova (NBM) has made significant progress in reinforcing its prudential and supervisory framework. Two medium-term strategies have been designed in succession since 2008 to set a forward-looking approach for supervision. The most recent one spanning four years (2013-17)...

An important aspect of the FSAP mission was the review of the bank crisis resolution framework in Moldova. There are several characteristics of vulnerabilities in the banking system which suggests the need for the authorities to give a high priority to crisis resolution preparedness. Notable in...

This note discusses the stress tests that were carried out on Moldova's banking system as part of the 2014 Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) Update. The objective of this exercise was to assess the resilience of the banking system to major sources of risk. The stress tests were...

Moldova has a modern interbank payment system that lies at the heart of its financial markets. The Automated Interbank Payment System (AIPS) settled on average MDL 2 billion (USD 214 million) per day, or 2.7 percent of GDP in 2013. It has real-time gross settlement features that help reduce...