Author/Editor:

International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department

Publication Date:

October 5, 2017

Electronic Access:

Free Full Text (PDF file size is 691 KB).Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file

Summary:

The size of Sweden’s banking system is equivalent to multiples of annual gross domestic product (GDP), and dominates the Swedish financial system. It is heavily concentrated, with four universal banks holding over 85 percent of all banking system assets. While these four large banks are all headquartered in Sweden, they have extensive cross-border operations in the other Nordic countries and the Baltics, making them critical to the entire region. One bank has been designated by the Financial Stability Board as one of the 30 global systemically important banks (G-SIBs). Finansinspektionen (FI), an integrated regulatory agency, supervises Swedish credit institutions, including the four large banks. The mission believes that while the priorities and supervisory approach of the banking supervision function are appropriate given available resources, the mission also believes that the banking supervision function is materially under-resourced. The issue of under-resourcing is similar to findings in the 2002 and 2011 FSAPs. While the government expanded the annual budget of FI in recent years, these increases have not been sufficient to close the gap between FI resources and those of comparable supervisors in other advanced countries.