Financial Stability Board

Last Updated: 2/7/2023

Overview: In response to the 2008 global financial crisis, the Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors created the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in 2009 as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF). The FSF, founded in 1999 by the G-7 finance ministers and central bank governors, was re-established as the Financial Stability Board with an expanded membership and broader mandate to address vulnerabilities affecting the global financial system, and to develop and promote the implementation of effective supervisory and regulatory policies promoting financial stability.

The FSB was created expressly to coordinate at the international level the work of national financial authorities and international standard setting bodies and to develop and promote the implementation of effective regulatory, supervisory and other financial sector policies in the interest of financial stability. The FSB brings together national authorities responsible for financial stability in 24 countries and jurisdictions, including all G-20 economies, the European Union, international financial institutions, sector-specific standard-setting bodies, and committees of central bank experts.

The FSB is chaired by Randal K. Quarles, Governor and Vice Chairman for Supervision, U.S. Federal Reserve. Its Secretariat is located in Basel, Switzerland, and hosted by the Bank for International Settlements. The FSB consists of a Plenary, a Steering Committee, and other committees and sub-groups as needed. The Plenary is the decision-making organ of the FSB. The Steering Committee provides operational guidance between plenary meetings to carry forward the directions of the FSB. The Steering Committee is primarily made up of central bankers and national banking/financial services regulators. The U.S. is represented on the Steering Committee by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Since the financial crisis, the FSB has advanced a major program of financial regulatory reforms to address perceived shortcomings in the financial system exposed by the crisis while striving to create globally-consistent rules and a level playing field across countries and sector. The FSB has been tasked with providing recommendations and exploring how to treat global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) so as to try to prevent another financial crisis.

The FSB defines G-SIFIs as "institutions whose distress or disorderly failure, because of their size, complexity and systemic interconnectedness, would cause significant disruption to the wider financial system and economic activity." At the direction of the FSB, the IAIS established an assessment methodology for the identification of global systemically important insurers (G-SIIs), and a set of policy measures that would apply to them.

In July 2013, the FSB announced a list of nine multinational insurance groups it considers to be G-SIIs, including three based in the U.S. While this was intended to be an annual assessment process, in November 2017, the FSB, in consultation with the IAIS and national authorities announced its decision to not publish a new list of G-SIIs for 2017, saying it welcomed the work being undertaken by the IAIS to develop an activities-based approach to systemic risk.  This work eventually became the IAIS holistic framework which was adopted in November 2019. Following its adoption, the FSB decided to suspend G-SII identification as of the beginning of 2020. In November 2022, based on an assessment of the initial years of implementation of the holistic framework, the FSB will review the need to discontinue or re-establish an annual identification of G- SIIs. Accordingly, the IAIS is undertaking a two-phase process to help inform the FSB’s review consisting of a baseline assessment and a targeted jurisdictional assessment.

In addition to development and implementation of financial crisis reforms, the FSB assesses vulnerability to global financial stability and undertakes work on financial innovation, structural changes to the financial system and market and institutional resilience. As part of these efforts, the FSB has established a regular program of country and thematic peer reviews of its member jurisdictions. In August 2013, the FSB released its peer review report  of the United States that confirms that the U.S. insurance regulatory system is effective at providing policyholder protection and ensuring the solvency of individual insurance companies.

The NAIC and state insurance regulators provide input to the FSB through the IAIS and through regular dialogues with U.S. federal agency staff supporting the U.S. FSB delegation.

In 2022, the FSB announced its decision to discontinue the annual identification of global systemically important insurers (G-SIIs). This decision acknowledges that Holistic Framework is more effective in assessing and mitigating systemic risk in the insurance sector than the G-SII Framework.