BIS international banking statistics at end-December 2015

21 April 2016

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) today released international banking statistics for the quarter and year ending in December 2015.

  • The slowdown in cross-border banking activity that began in early 2015 broadened in the final quarter of the year. Whereas in Q3 2015 this slowdown was most pronounced for interbank activity and lending to emerging market economies (EMEs), in Q4 2015 it spread across sectors, major currencies and regions.

  • Cross-border bank credit to EMEs in aggregate contracted by 8% in the year to end-December 2015, the largest annual rate of contraction since 2009. Claims on China fell by $114 billion, the largest drop during the quarter.

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 June 2016. The international banking statistics at end-March 2016 will be released no later than 22 July 2016.

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