International banking statistics at end-March 2015

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) today released international banking statistics at end-March 2015.

• Global cross-border claims of BIS reporting banks continued to expand in early 2015, rising by $755 billion between end-December 2014 and end-March 2015. The latest quarterly increase lifted the annual growth rate of claims to 6%, compared with -2% a year earlier.
• Euro-denominated cross-border claims and lending to the euro area surged during the first quarter of 2015. Greece was a notable exception: cross-border lending to residents of the country fell by $22 billion between end-December 2014 and end-March 2015.
• Lending to emerging economies diverged from the global trend during Q1 2015, contracting by $50 billion on an exchange rate-adjusted basis. Lending to China declined for the second consecutive quarter, slowing the annual growth rate to zero. Cross-border claims on Russia and Ukraine saw another quarterly decline, accelerating their annual rates of contraction to a respective 29% and 48%.

Developments in the latest international banking statistics, including breaks in series arising from methodological changes, are summarised in the Statistical release. Data are available on the BIS website, via the BIS WebStats query tool, or as tables in PDF.

Data are subject to change; revised data will be released in conjunction with the forthcoming BIS Quarterly Review on 13 September 2015. The international banking statistics at end-June 2015 will be released on or before 23 October 2015.

Queries regarding the international banking statistics may be directed to statistics$bis.org (where "$" denotes "@").