Guidance to Assess the Systemic Importance of Financial Institutions, Markets and Instruments.

The report outlines conceptual and analytical approaches to the assessment of systemic importance and discusses a possible form for general guidelines. The report recognizes that current knowledge and concerns about moral hazard limit the extent to which very precise guidance can be developed. Assessments of systemic importance will necessarily involve a high degree of judgment, they will likely be time-varying and state-dependent, and they will reflect the purpose of the assessment. The report does not pre-judge the policy actions to which such assessments could be an input. The report suggests that the guidelines could take the form of high level principles that would be sufficiently flexible to apply to a broad range of countries and circumstances, and it outlines the possible coverage of such guidelines. A set of such high level principles appropriate for a variety of policy uses could be developed, further, by the IMF, BIS and FSB, taking account of experience with the application of the conceptual and analytical approaches described here. Read the report to G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors