Safer global financial system not yet established

Five years after the eruption of the financial crisis, a safer global financial system has not been fully established despite some reform progress, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday. "Although the intentions of policymakers are clear and positive, the reforms have yet to effect a safer set of financial structures, in part because, in some economies and regions, the intervention measures needed to deal with the prolonged crisis are delaying a ' reboot' of the system onto a safer path," the IMF said in the analytical chapters of its Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) . Despite a host of regulatory reforms aimed in the right direction, the financial structures present before the crisis have not actually changed that much, Laura Kodres, assistant director of IMF Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said Tuesday at an IMF press conference. Reforms in some areas still needed to be further refined by policymakers, despite progress on the reform agenda to make markets and institutions more transparent, less complex and less leveraged, the IMF said in the report released before the annual meetings of the global lender and World Bank. A safer financial system refers to one that is less complex and more transparent, a system in which institutions are less dependent on leverage, are better capitalized and better able to absorb loss, and can better manage liquidity risk, according to the Washington-based global lender. "The basic financial structures that we found problematic before the crisis are still with us," said Kodres, adding that financial systems were still overly complex, banking assets were highly concentrated, and the too-important-to-fail issues were unresolved. "Complexity can be detrimental to financial stability if the associated financial products are opaque and cannot be easily priced," the IMF cautioned in its flagship report. The global financial crisis has required policymakers to reconsider the role that the structure of their financial systems played in achieving good economic outcomes including better economic growth, noted the report. The IMF study also revealed that higher financial buffers were related to higher economic growth before and after the financial crisis for both advanced and emerging economies. The third and fourth chapters of the report are analytical ones, and the first two chapters are set to release during the annual meetings. The annual meetings of the IMF and its sister agency World Bank are scheduled to kick off in Tokyo, Japan next month.