Financial-market complexity shouldn't lead to crisis. There is a better, simpler way: Split the banks.

A complement to the OECD insurance database, this report monitors and analyses the insurance industry’s overall performance and health in OECD countries and Hong Kong (China), India, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Africa and Thailand.

This report advances a “green investment policy framework” taking infrastructure investment as a starting point and looking only at climate change mitigation and adaptation. It highlights the significant opportunities and many challenges that exist today in both developed and developing countries to transition to low-carbon, climate-resilient (LCR) development through investment in both renovated and in new infrastructure.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría opens the Global Forum on Better Governance for Inclusive Growth held in Paris. The Forum will focus on public sector reforms worldwide and identify lessons learned, good practices and innovative solutions for advancing the governance reforms necessary to foster inclusive growth.

OECD countries are intensifying their fiscal consolidation efforts, introducing additional measures and extending the time horizon to implement them. Most have announced fiscal consolidation of more than 3% of GDP over the period 2009-15, according to the OECD’s Restoring Public Finances 2012.

This report concludes that actual application of bail-ins, involving bondholders in loss sharing, could effectively reign in perceptions of implicit guarantees for bank debt. However, bail-ins are rare owing to concerns about contagion risks and depositor and investor protection, so implicit guarantees persist.

This paper addresses several broad issues for governments aiming to encourage private sector investment in low-carbon climate resilient (LCR) infrastructure, in both developed and developing world contexts.

Paris, 5 December 2012: This conference addressed the evolution of the terrorism threat and whether current insurance solutions adequately answer the needs of market players in an ever changing risk context.

Big changes are needed to strengthen the capital positions of euro area banks. European banks remain at the heart of the euro area crisis. Despite actions to strengthen banks and build a banking union, confidence in the euro area banking system remains weak, and is likely to remain so until underlying concerns over low capitalisation of some banks are addressed.

This conference in Nairobi, Kenya, addressed specific issues relating to financial literacy in Africa and the MENA region. It presented the output of the Russia/OECD/World Bank Trust Fund on Financial Literacy and Education.

The gross borrowing needs of OECD governments are projected to increase slightly to around USD 10.9 trillion in 2013, up from the already high level of USD 10.8 trillion in 2012, according to a new OECD report.

This conference, taking place on 4-5 March 2013 in New Delhi, India, addressed specific issues relating to financial literacy in India and the Asia region. It presented the output of the Russia/OECD/World Bank Trust Fund on Financial Literacy and Education.

London, UK. Discussions at this event focused on how to make Defined Contribution pensions work better for members, designing Defined Ambition pension plans, guarantees v. risk sharing pension deals and pensions communication and individual behaviour.

This article by OECD Deputy Secretary-General Rintaro Tamaki focuses on three issues that will be important in shaping the future of the Asian economic and financial community: trade, funding long-term investment and strengthened regional financial co-operation.

This article summarises discussions from a financial roundtable addressing concerns about structural flaws in the way banks operate and are being regulated and supervised in the wake of on-going banking sector problems involving financial fraud and banking scandals.

The implications of the European sovereign debt crisis for Asia, the globalisation of the funding of investments and the contribution of long-term institutional investors to growth were amongst the topics explored at the 2013 Tokyo Roundtable.

The management of operational risk is at the heart of efficient government, but countries often fail to apply good or even routine operational risk management practices and have difficulty in understanding how to put the processes in place. This paper sets out a widely-applicable and relevant policy approach and management framework and illustrates its practical application in Turkey.

The OECD provides an update on global economy in this statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee - April 2013.

This statement by Adrian Blundell-Wignall and Paul Atkinson was presented to the German Bundestag's Finance Committee Hearing on the Draft Bank-Separation Law (Drucksache 17/12601) on 22 April 2013.

Governments are major issuers of debt instruments in the global financial market. This volume provides quantitative information on central government debt instruments for the 34 OECD countries.

The paper argues that interest rates are at extremely low levels to support banks, and the search for yield has pushed the liquidity driven speculative bubble from real estate, derivatives and structured products markets into the corporate debt market. Equities have rallied strongly too. This asset cycle is certainly helping banks reduce hidden losses on illiquid securities and could also help reduce the cost of equity.

The crisis has shown that there is no such thing as an optimal banking structure or model. The Liikanen report highlighted excessive risk taking and excessive reliance on short-term funding not matched with adequate capital protection. The French reform of the banking sector builds on this insight as well as the agreement reached by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the European CRD 4 to foster financial stability.

Co-organised by the G20 Russian Presidency and the OECD, this roundtable focused on policy measures to address constraints in long-term investment. It was organised back-to-back with the 2013 OECD Forum and the OECD-Euromoney Infrastructure Summit.

This conference in Moscow explored strategies for developing financial literacy and capability and building effective consumer protection systems.

Whether you blame poor regulation, sloppy governance, greed or bad luck, banks were frontline culprits in causing the crisis. Governments have been working on reforms to fix the financial sector and improve governance, but a lot more work remains to be done. Some OECD principles can help.

Faced with the acute poverty of many Russian pensioners, the Russian government is engaged in wide-ranging systemic reforms. This report contributes to the policy discussion by identifying aspects of the system that may need to be reformed and describing the experience of other countries as a point of comparison.

At a time when many governments are looking to encourage private investment in infrastructure to bridge the infrastructure financing gap, this paper compares the experience of pension funds in Canada and Australia, looking at infrastructure policies, the pension system, investment strategies, asset allocation and governance of pension funds.

Sovereign index-linked bond issuance has grown significantly since the early 1980s and index-linked bonds have become a widely accepted part of the set of instruments that sovereign debt managers use for funding purposes. This paper sets out a methodology for assessing their cost effectiveness relative to other financing options, using UK examples for illustration.

This database and book provide major official insurance statistics for all OECD countries including data on premiums collected, claims, commissions by type of insurance, investments by type of investment, and numbers of companies and employees.

This seminar took place in Palembang, Indonesia, with discussions focusing on institutional investors and long-term financing and policy measures and initiatives to address constraints to infrastructure investment identified by APEC under the Indonesian presidency.

The financial crisis has shown that many people need to have a better understanding of the financial issues in order to make informed decisions on matters such as savings, investments, pensions and credit, according to a report to be presented to G20 leaders in Saint Petersburg this week.

At their meetings on 19-20 September 2013, APEC Finance Ministers welcomed a survey report prepared by the OECD on disaster risk financing practices in the Asia Pacific region.

This regional seminar in Montevideo, Uruguay, focused on the monitoring and transparency of insurance markets in Latin America through the provision of sound insurance statistics and indicators, regionally and globally.

Jointly developed by the IMF, World Bank, EBRD, and the OECD, this report analyses the main elements necessary to deepen domestic bond markets in emerging and developing economies.

Low levels of financial inclusion are associated with lower levels of financial literacy. This report looks at how policy makers are developing financial education policies for financial inclusion. It highlights challenges faced and solutions found, as well as outlining the main lessons learnt and possibilities for the way forward.

This book addresses gender differences in financial literacy and reviews policy responses and initiatives across the world to tackle women’s and girls’ needs, drawing lessons from existing experiences.

This paper examines how institutional investors can access green infrastructure, the extent to which this is currently happening, and the barriers to scaling up these investment flows. Based on four case studies, broader lessons are drawn for governments on the policy settings which may support investment in green infrastructure by institutional investors.

After showing an average negative rate of return on investment across the OECD zone in 2011, pension fund assets achieved high returns in almost all OECD countries in 2012, with a real return greater than 5% in 18 countries, according to the latest edition of Pension Markets in Focus.

The 2013 Global Forum focused on a number of critical policy, regulatory and supervisory issues affecting private and public pension provision in the Asia region.

This paper identifies the main trends in long-term financial intermediation focusing on the role of institutional investors in providing long-term finance for growth and development. It also highlights infrastructure as one specific sector that is facing major challenges in long-term financing.

This statistical yearbook provides quantitative information on African central government debt instruments. It includes individual country data but also comparative statistics to facilitate pan-African (cross-country) analysis.

The bank regulator's paradox is that large, complex and interconnected banks need very little capital in the good times, but they can never have enough in an extreme crisis. Separation is required to deal with this problem, which derives mainly from counterparty risk. This paper outlines the OECD’s separation proposal and also compares it to current national approaches to separation.

This paper looks at macro-prudential policies in the light of empirical evidence on the determinants of bank systemic risk, and the effectiveness of capital controls. It concludes that complexity and interdependence is such that care should be taken in implementing macro-prudential policies until much more is understood about these issues.

This paper investigates whether countries that had controls on inflows in place prior to the crisis were less vulnerable during the global financial crisis. More generally, it examines economic growth effects of such controls over the entire economic cycle, finding that capital restrictions on inflows (particularly debt liabilities) may be useful in good times but may have adverse effects in a crisis.

The main hallmarks of the global financial crisis were too-big-to-fail institutions taking on too much risk with other people’s money: excess leverage and default pressure resulting from contagion and counterparty risk. This paper looks at whether the Basel III reforms address these issues effectively and proposes improvements to the current reform proposals.

The 2013 Forum was held on 5-6 December and discussed how governments can improve their investment policy framework to reduce the risk and attract long-term private finance in support of green growth.

This event, co-organised by the OECD and the Korean authorities, explored policies and good practices for supporting long-term savings and investments through financial education and financial consumer protection.

Discussions at the 14th roundtable focussed on quantitative easing (QE) tapering to Asia, financial regulatory reforms, financial liberalisation and fragmenting growth, long-term investment for infrastructure, financial inclusion and disaster risk financing in insurance and financial markets.

This article presents a brief overview of current financing difficulties for SMEs and policy measures to support SME lending during the crisis, and presents a literature review related to difficulties in SME’s access to finance during the crisis, against a background of a sharp decline in bank profitability and an erosion of bank capital that negatively affected lending.

The value of implicit guarantees has declined from its peak at the height of the financial crisis, which is consistent with progress made regarding the bank regulatory reform agenda, as one would expect that many of the reform measures imply a more limited value of implicit guarantees for bank debt. Implicit guarantees persist however and their value continues to be significant.