Since the Brazil 2012 FSAP, the financial system has been stable despite the deep recession. The resiliency of the banking system was supported by high profitability, buoyed by large interest margins. While the financial system has grown since the 2012 FSAP, its structure remains largely...

The Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) has shown a determined commitment to enhancing its standards and practices of banking supervision. Changes in the thinking and practices of the BCB's supervision are not limited to responses to the demands of the international regulatory reform agenda. Overall,...

Important improvements have been made to the bank resolution, safety net and crisis management framework since the last FSAP. The resolution framework has been strengthened with the creation, within the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB), of a new Resolution Department, and requirements for recovery...

Brazilian FMIs are among the top twenty worldwide. All together there are sixteen financial market infrastructures2 (FMIs) operating in the Brazilian payment system (SPB), out of which nine3 are systemically important and four belong to the top twenty FMIs in the world4. FMIs play an essential...

The insurance sector has significant potential for expansion and to contribute to economic growth as an important part of the financial sector. While the insurance sector has grown at 10 percent annually over the last 5 years, on average, and remains profitable with high solvency ratios, the...

The financial system has been resilient through the severe recession. Banks and investment funds dominate Brazil's financial system landscape. The banking sector has continued to be well-capitalized, profitable, and liquid. Profitability has been supported by prudent lending standards, high...

Brazil's financial markets are generally liquid and sophisticated. Brazil is blessed with a wide array of instruments which investors can use to manage and hedge interest rate and FX risks. The infrastructure supporting markets appears sound and is widely attributed by market participants to...

Brazil has a large and diverse investments funds sector which is subject to a robust regulatory framework. The competent authority, the Comissao de Valores Mobiliarios (CVM), requires high standards of the entities it oversees and makes good use of the extensive data it receives from market...

Brazil is the largest country in Latin America with a varied geography and a population of over 200 million spread across 26 diverse states, generating wide-ranging infrastructure needs. Over the decades, many government investment initiatives have been launched to address these needs, however...

This Selected Issues paper examines the profitability of the foreign exchange (FX) swaps issued the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) between May 2013 and February 2019 to shed light on the rationale for FX intervention. Using interest rate and exchange rate forecasts, the paper shows that that FX...