In early 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) initiated the Financial Soundness Indicators (FSI) project in response to the financial market crises of the late 1990s. This initiative is an attempt to define, with a maximum of consistency, macroprudential indicators for assessing national financial systems in numerous countries and make them available to the general public.

The primary aim of the FSIs is to help make financial systems more transparent, especially in those emerging markets and developing countries for which the availability of such data has hitherto been limited. An additional aim is to improve crisis prevention through a regular assessment of the situation and risks based on these indicators. Against this background, the IMF also uses these indicators in its Article IV consultations and Financial Sector Assessment Programs (FSAP) to assess the stability of its members’ financial systems.

The indicators are regularly compiled and published by the member countries on a voluntary basis. Comprehensive notes (metadata) on the statistical methodology and on the legal and institutional framework underlying the data surveys are provided, too. They are designed primarily to highlight the differences in respect of national prudential and accounting standards which impair the indicators’ cross-country comparability. This makes them an indispensable interpretation aid for the data users.

The results for Germany are published here. In addition, you will find methodological notes to better understand how the indicators were derived for Germany. Further metadata for Germany as well as the findings and metadata for other countries are available on the IMF website.