The Bank for International Settlements published Working Paper No. 1394 in November 2026. Authors Christian Schmieder, Min Wei, and Li Lian Ong built a free, interactive stress-testing toolkit. It covers nearly 13,000 commercial banks in more than 100 economies, with data back to 2006. According to a footnote in the paper, covered banking assets reached roughly $170 trillion in 2025. The headline is the scale. The more interesting story is what the authors admit their own tool cannot see.
🚨 NEW: The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) just released a global liquidity stress-testing tool covering nearly 13,000 banks in 100+ economies, about $170 trillion in assets. The paper warns digital bank runs can unfold in hours, challenging Basel III liquidity rules. https://t.co/WLL9MeSIRf
— Generation Infinity (@Genfinity) November 11, 2026
A Public Tool Where Only Confidential Ones Existed
Supervisors already run liquidity stress tests, but they rely on confidential cash-flow data. Authorities rarely publish the results, and the numbers do not compare well across borders. Meanwhile, public liquidity coverage ratio disclosures reach mostly large, internationally active banks. Those disclosures also start only in the mid-2010s, and they report one regulatory number rather than a range of shocks. As a result, the authors say they know of no public tool that compares individual banks and whole systems on one consistent basis.
The toolkit fills that gap with data from Moody’s Analytics BankFocus. It applies one method to banks in advanced, emerging, and developing economies alike. Users do not need to collect any data themselves. The AMRO website hosts the tool, and AMRO is the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office where Wei works. The authors also note that the paper reflects their views, not those of the BIS or its member central banks.
How the Breakeven Stress Factor Works
Most stress tests ask whether a bank passes a fixed scenario. This toolkit flips the question and asks how severe a shock the bank can absorb. The answer arrives as a single figure called the breakeven stress factor. It marks the point where a bank’s stressed outflows exceed the cash it can raise from its assets, so net liquidity turns negative.
The model compares two quantities over a 30-day horizon. Inflows measure the cash a bank can raise by selling or pledging assets after fire-sale haircuts and after removing already pledged holdings. Outflows measure funding that customers withdraw or lenders refuse to roll over. Three preset scenarios scale every haircut, encumbrance rate, and run-off rate by one, two, and four. The toughest setting matches the pain at Northern Rock, Washington Mutual, and IndyMac during the 2008 crisis. A factor below one means a bank would run short even under the mildest scenario.
What the Data Says About Basel III Progress
The headline result is encouraging. Liquidity buffers have generally improved since Basel III arrived. The weakest 10 percent of banks worldwide could now withstand the second, severe scenario. Median banks in every region sit close to surviving the third, harshest one. Europe shows the clearest gains, especially after the sovereign debt crisis.
However, averages hide a vulnerable tail. The authors point to European banking systems with moderate median results and wide internal gaps between banks. In those systems, a weak group of lenders can sit inside an apparently healthy whole. Additionally, national rankings barely moved. The correlation between 2007 and 2024 country ranks fell from about 0.87 to roughly 0.47, so order eroded only partly. About 44 percent of the weakest-quintile systems stayed in that quintile, and 40 percent of the strongest stayed on top.
The SVB Problem: Reassuring Numbers Before the Run
The most revealing section tests the tool against the 2023 failures. The authors examine Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, and Credit Suisse. Their breakeven stress factors rose in 2020 and 2021 and reached levels that could survive the harshest scenario. That improvement came from pandemic deposit inflows, which the banks parked in government and agency mortgage-backed securities. Rising interest rates and duration mismatches stayed hidden behind the swelling pile of liquid assets.
In 2022, the picture changed. Bond values fell, which cut the cash those securities could raise. At the same time, uninsured deposits proved highly sensitive to market sentiment and social media. Even so, the annual metric still did not clearly flag the coming failures. Some deposit outflows reached 20 to 25 percent of total deposits within days. That pace exceeded even the harshest scenario’s run-off rates.
Why the 30-Day Window Strains Under Digital Runs
This finding connects directly to the debate over Basel III. The liquidity coverage ratio asks banks to hold enough high-quality liquid assets to cover 30 days of stressed net outflows. It assumes run-off rates of 3 to 5 percent for stable retail deposits and 10 percent for less stable ones. The paper cites the Basel Committee’s 2024 review, which says digital channels and social media enable withdrawals at speeds the 30-day horizon never anticipated. The authors argue that digital channels can now compress a classic run from weeks into hours.
The paper stops short of declaring the framework broken. Instead, it lists specific weaknesses. A 30-day snapshot can look adequate even if a bank exhausts usable cash much earlier. Banks can also steer balance sheets around reporting dates. Furthermore, headline numbers cannot capture depositor concentration, such as the tight, interconnected group of uninsured depositors at SVB. The toolkit itself shares these limits, and the authors say so plainly.
The authors also test their model against reality. Its breakeven factor correlates with disclosed liquidity coverage ratios, but only modestly. The Spearman correlation reaches 0.24 using basic data and 0.30 using granular data. Only about a quarter of bank-years land in the same quintile under both measures. Consequently, the paper positions the tool as a screening and peer-comparison aid, not an early-warning system.
The Next Frontier: Nonbank Links and Faster Data
The conclusion looks beyond banks. The authors name nonbank financial intermediaries as the next frontier for liquidity analysis. Deposits from these firms can make bank funding more fragile. In the other direction, forced asset sales by large nonbank institutions can push stress back onto banks that look resilient on their own. Because of these links, the authors say future tools must span the whole financial system.
They also set a clear priority for future work. The team wants to add nonbank balance sheets, exposure networks, and high-frequency data inputs. That last item matters most for the speed problem. An annual dataset cannot catch a run that unfolds over a weekend. Meanwhile, the paper suggests sensitivity analysis to show how fast a bank’s profile can deteriorate once deposits start leaving.
For crypto readers, the relevance is indirect but real. The paper does not analyze stablecoins or tokenized deposits. It does show how quickly confidence travels through digital channels, which is the same dynamic that shapes onchain redemption risk. Regulators now have a free, public benchmark for judging bank liquidity. They also have written evidence that the benchmark needs a faster clock.
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