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14 October 2013

EBF: Compliance in a challenging environment - A shrinking banking sector


The EBF's '2013 Facts and Figures' report shows that the European banking sector is shrinking, due to numerous regulatory changes and a difficult economic environment.

The overall number of financial institutions has diminished, as have the totals of assets, deposits and loans. At the same time, the number of non-performing loans keeps increasing, while the loans-to-deposits ratio keeps diminishing.

In parallel, banks are struggling to tame their cost-to-income ratio: increasing costs for the sector are met by reduced income, a balance that is more and more difficult to keep. Indeed, the EU domestic banks’ return on equity was a negative - 1.6% in 2012; banks have however increased their Tier 1 capital to an average 12% as required.

The first two chapters of the report cover the trends in banking and the economy registered for 2012. This time authors made an effort to expand the EU-level overview of banking sector figures with the data on securities (chapter 1, section 7).

Special features focus on euro area deposits (chapter 3) and on trade finance (chapter 4).

Press release

2013 Facts and Figures



© EBF


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