Low interest rates and an ample supply of central bank liquidity have helped to ease the tensions on the international financial markets. So far this year, the German financial system has also benefited from this situation. However, the Bundesbank believes that these exceptional financial conditions present risks to financial stability the longer they prevail.

German banks’ lending policy remained virtually unchanged, on the whole, in the third quarter of 2013. This was the outcome of the latest round of the Bank Lending Survey.

The financial assets of households increased by €23 billion, or 0.5% on the quarter, to €5,027 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2013.

The European Central Bank (ECB) today published first details of its comprehensive assessment. The assessment will include a total of 124 banking groups in the euro area, 24 of them German, and is to be concluded before the launch of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) in November 2014. Measured against total assets, the comprehensive assessment therefore covers around 65 % of the German banking sector.

Topics: House price increases since 2010: determinants and regional dependencies, Macroeconomic approaches for assessing price competitiveness, International cooperation in the area of financial sector policies – the Financial Stability Board