Shadow banks have experienced their first fall in assets since 2008, according to new data from the Financial Stability Board, as a Chinese crackdown and stock market declines threw the sector’s growth into reverse.
Trust companies in China, which offer a variety of financial services outside the formal banking system, saw their assets drop 22 per cent in 2018 after regulators strengthened their monitoring and took enforcement action. Stock market declines over the period hit a wider variety of non-bank vehicles around the world.
Overall, assets within the FSB’s loosest definition of non-banks decreased by 0.1 per cent to $183.7tn in 2018, showing the limits to the expansion of shadow banks since the financial crisis.