The Financial Stability Board has published an update to its correspondent banking data report. The latest data report updates the data report the FSB published in July 2017 alongside a report for the G20 on progress made on the four point action plan the FSB launched in November 2015 to address the decline in correspondent banking relationships. The latest data report updates the July 2017 data report with additional information provided by SWIFT incorporating the period from January to June 2017.

This new data reveals the average number of active corridors per country (that is, direct relationships between countries, measured by the flow of SWIFT messages) increased in the first half of 2017 in Oceania, Eastern Europe, and Northern America but declined in the rest of the Americas and of Europe, as well as Africa and Asia. There was continued reduction in the total number of active correspondents (as measured by the number of banks that have sent or received messages corridor by corridor in a given month). This decline in active correspondents has not resulted in a lower number of payment messages (volume) or a lower underlying value of the messages processed through SWIFT, leading the FSB to conclude that the higher volume of messages could in part reflect a lengthening of payment chains, as previously discussed in its July 2017 report. Concentration levels of correspondent banking remain high.

The FSB plans to publish a further progress report for the G20 in March 2018 on its work to address the decline in correspondent banking relationships. It will also publish a fuller data analysis, based on end-2017 data, in mid-2018.

View the updated data report.

View the FSB press release.

View the four point action plan.