FSI Home Page


	The Financial Soundness Indicators (FSIs) developed by the IMF together with the international community, are aimed at supporting macroprudential analysis—the surveillance and assessment of the strengths and vulnerabilities of financial systems:
	FSIs include indicators of the health of entire sectors of financial institutions, but also of the counterpart corporate and household sectors, and of relevant markets. FSIs, conceived as a new area of statistics—macroprudential statistics—aims to fill the gap between macroeconomic statistics and micro-prudential data.
	A number of IMF member countries have up to now been invited—but are not required—to regularly report FSIs to the IMF for dissemination:
	Countries that choose to report are to provide for dissemination by the IMF at least the 12 core FSIs for the sector of deposit takers, underlying series, and corresponding metadata. Countries are encouraged to submit data and metadata for all, or some of, the 28 encouraged FSIs (covering deposit takers and other sectors/markets). Countries may choose to report a given FSI monthly, quarterly, semiannually, or annually for dissemination by the IMF. There is no set time lag to dissemination. The IMF will aim over time to add to the list of reporters so as to meet the needs of the international community and of IMF surveillance of the international financial system.

Data Access

Data Comparability

Information By Country shows data and metadata by country (as reported by each country to the IMF using the standard FSI Template, as well as using IMF.stat).

Cross-Country Queries shows data and metadata of pre-constructed groupings of countries using IMF.Stat.

Detailed queries of supervisory-based data and real estate prices offers users the capacity to define their own queries of more detailed metadata for the FSIs on residential and commercial real estate prices as well as about the following underlying series that are used to compile several FSIs: regulatory capital, risk weighted assets, nonperforming loans and provisions. The views of the more detailed metadata available through this facility are not available through IMF.STAT.

Build your own query offers users the capacity to create their own queries of the FSI database using IMF.stat.

Note: The results of some queries may take some time to appear on your screen. Please allow sufficient time for the results to load. Intermittent browser errors may occur and be addressed by rerunning the query.

Users of FSI data are urged to look carefully at the provided metadata before engaging in comparisons of different economies’ FSIs or assessments of the evolution of a FSI for a given country over time.

Metadata accompany the FSIs and their underlying data series because they are seen as essential to understanding the data and the extent of data comparability, helping to avoid inappropriate interpretations of FSIs and comparisons of FSI data compiled using different methodologies.
The metadata by-and-large focus on the degree of consistency of national practices with the benchmarks or recommendations set out in the FSI Guide and its Amendments, and are intended to allow users to identify methodological differences with the recommended standards as well as changes in methodology over time.
The data can be retrieved and sorted, using criteria chosen by the user from the rich set of metadata categories (see description of metadata). This permits the easy retrieval of data that are cross-country (and/or cross-time) comparable for the chosen metadata categories.
The database permits quick searches into the various aspects of the compilation methods used to produce a given FSI for a given country, allowing “drilling down” to more detail, as deemed necessary by the user.
All information in the metadata can be searched by metadata categories, and for many of these categories there can also be searches on the basis of the content of the metadata.
Besides possible methodological differences in the compilation of FSIs, data users should also bear in mind that FSIs for different countries may not be comparable because the circumstances across economies may differ. In this regard, FSIs should be interpreted in the context of other information, such as (1) the broader picture of economic and financial circumstances of a country, (2) the institutional and regulatory framework for an economy, and (3) the structure of the country's financial system and strength of its financial infrastructure.

Background to the Regular Reporting of FSIs to the IMF

The IMF Executive Board has consistently underscored the importance of FSIs in addressing financial sector soundness, facilitating financial sector surveillance, increasing the transparency and stability f financial systems, and strengthening market discipline. (more...)