Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI): Financial Services

This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for financial services. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The indices are calculated for 40 countries, the 34 OECD members and Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. The STRIs capture de jure restrictions. This report presents the first vintage of indicators for commercial banking and insurance services and captures regulations in force in 2013. The scores in commercial banking range between 0.06 and 0.55, with a sample average of 0.19. The scores in insurance services range between 0.05 and 0.63, with a sample average of 0.20. The results are mainly driven by restrictions on market entry, where significant impediments remain in the form of foreign equity limits, restrictions on legal form, discriminatory licensing criteria and restrictions on cross-border transactions. Barriers to competition, including regulation of products and prices and preferential treatment granted to state-owned financial institutions, also make a substantive contribution to the index values. The paper presents the list of measures included in the indices, the scoring and weighting system for calculating the indices and an analysis of the results.