In the years since the global financial crisis, non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) have shown continuous growth, and now account for more than half of global financial assets.
Although there are a variety of reasons for this development, one of the factors has been the stricter banking regulation adopted after the global financial crisis constraining the risk-taking of banks. The regulatory reforms of the last decade have promoted financial stability, especially in the banking sector. At the same time, these reforms have been accompanied by an expansion of actors outside the regulatory perimeter.
NBFIs have grown faster than banks over much of the past decade: in the euro area, their assets have almost doubled, reaching €48 trillion in December 2020 (Chart 1). In the same period, non-bank finance has become an important source of funding for the real economy: its share of credit to non-financial corporations has increased from about 15% to 30% (Chart 2).
