Macroprudential policy, whose objective is to maintain financial stability, gained prominence during the international financial crisis, accompanied by extreme regulation and supervision of banks. With monetary policy focused on fighting deflation and pushed to its limits, it is important to take additional measures to ensure the financial stability achieved. Macroprudential measures combat potential risks that may arise from the structural characteristics of the financial system as a whole, but focus almost exclusively on banks. It is easy to find definitions that refer to “the prevention of potential systemic risks and testing the resilience of banks.” But what about the rest of the financial sector? During the crisis years, a growing number of entities that are not banks but carry out activities typical of credit institutions have emerged. Insurance companies, investment funds, pension funds, and fintech have flourished under a disintermediation process fueled by non-traditional monetary policy measures. Digital development and regulatory gaps have also contributed to reducing the weight of banks in economic financing. Although new competitors still capture a small portion of the pie, they have registered strong growth. All of this has sparked an institutional debate about the need to extend macroprudential instruments beyond the banking system. But for the moment it has remained just that, a mere debate.
Financial crises are more difficult to digest than crises of economic origin. The Great Recession was gestated over more
than a decade, under very favorable financial conditions. Now structural weakness and high debt combine to leave us with a scenario of lower economic certainty than normal in the future. And in this scenario it is understandable that international economic authorities have pushed demand policies to the limit.
