3

# **I.   INTRODUCTION**

The recent global crisis tested and tried deposit insurance schemes (DIS), and their ability to protect household savings in banks. Country authorities and financial regulators reacted to the extraordinary circumstances of the crisis by expanding the coverage offered in existing deposit insurance arrangements or adopting deposit insurance where it was not already in place. This pattern of policy response exposed the adverse distributional effects of generous schemes and underscored the strengths and weaknesses of different DIS features.

This paper presents a comprehensive database of deposit insurance arrangements through the end of 2013, covering the IMF membership of 188 countries plus Liechtenstein. For countries with an explicit deposit insurance scheme, information is provided on the characteristics of the DIS (such as type, management, coverage, funding, and payouts). For recent years, we add information on deposit coverage increases, government guarantees on deposits and non-deposit liabilities, as well as whether a country experienced a significant nationalization of banks. To assess a country’s ability to honor its deposit insurance (and other safety net) obligations, we supplement these data with information on the size of potential deposit liabilities, the amount of DIS funds, and government indebtedness.

While it is too early to draw definitive conclusions about the adequacy of DIS during the recent global financial crisis, our preliminary assessment is that, by and large, DIS fulfilled its foremost purpose of preventing open runs on bank deposits. In the face of large shocks to the global financial system, as well as concerted and protracted concerns about the solvency of practically every large financial institution in the world, we did not observe widespread bank runs. There were some notable exceptions (such as Northern Rock in the UK) and there were protracted withdrawals by uninsured depositors, but the world did not experience systemic bank runs by _insured_ depositors. From this perspective, DIS delivered on its narrow objective. However, as we look to what we hope are many post-crisis years, the expansion of the financial safety net (both through an extended coverage of deposit insurance and increased reliance on government guarantees and demonstrated rescue propensities to support the financial sector) is something to worry about. The expansion of national safety nets raises questions about (i) whether government finances are adequate to support the promises of existing DIS in future periods of stress (the more so given that governments will likely face renewed pressures to further increase DIS promises in future crises) and (ii) how to balance the objective of preventing bank runs with the potentially negative effects of DIS in the form of moral hazard and the threat to financial stability from incentives for aggressive risk-taking.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the main database, with a description of each variable included. Section 3 surveys the current state of DIS worldwide. Section 4 reviews policies undertaken during the financial crisis period to protect depositors against the loss of value of their deposit savings. Section 5 concludes.