International banking statistics at end-September 2015

21 January 2016

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) today released international banking statistics at end-September 2015.

  • Cross-border bank lending shrank for the second consecutive quarter, due mainly to falling claims on emerging market economies (EMEs). The global contraction of $151 billion between end-June and end-September 2015 was smaller than the previous quarter's and left outstanding claims at $27 trillion.

  • Cross-border claims on advanced economies remained virtually unchanged in Q3 2015, while those on EMEs declined by $142 billion. The decline was primarily driven by emerging Asia, and China in particular.

  • Cross-border bank credit to China fell by $119 billion between end-June and end-September 2015, or by 17% from a year earlier. Outstanding claims on China at end-September 2015 totalled $877 billion, the lowest in two years.

Developments in the latest international banking statistics are summarised in the Statistical release, together with charts showing historical data. Additional data are available on the BIS website, where they can be viewed as tables in PDF, browsed in the BIS Statistics Explorer, or searched in the BIS Statistics Warehouse.

Data are subject to change. Revised data will be released concurrently with the forthcoming BIS Quarterly Review on 6 March 2016. The international banking statistics at end-December 2015 will be released no later than 22 April 2016.

Queries about the international banking statistics may be directed to statistics$bis.org (where "$" denotes "@").