The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body established in April 2009 by the G20 at the London Summit, succeeding the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) that had been created in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis. It is hosted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, and operates under a Charter most recently revised in 2012.
The FSB brings together national financial authorities — central banks, finance ministries, and supervisory and regulatory agencies — from G20 economies, plus Hong Kong, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. It also includes international standard-setting bodies such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), as well as the IMF, World Bank, OECD, BIS, and ECB.
Its core functions include:
- Assessing vulnerabilities in the global financial system
- Coordinating policy development across jurisdictions and standard-setters
- Monitoring implementation of agreed reforms through peer reviews
- Designating Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) and insurers (G-SIIs), in cooperation with the BCBS and IAIS
The FSB does not have treaty-based legal authority; its decisions are not binding and rely on members' political commitment to implement them domestically. Notable workstreams have included post-2008 reforms on bank capital and resolution regimes, shadow banking ("non-bank financial intermediation"), over-the-counter derivatives markets, crypto-asset regulation, and climate-related financial disclosures — the latter through its Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), launched in 2015 and whose work was absorbed by the IFRS Foundation in 2024.
Note: Despite the "uno_organs_agencies" category, the FSB is not a UN body. It is an intergovernmental forum linked to the G20 and BIS, and is frequently referenced in MUN committees such as ECOFIN, the IMF, and crisis simulations on financial regulation.
Example
In November 2022, the FSB published its first set of high-level recommendations for the regulation and oversight of crypto-asset activities, following the collapse of TerraUSD and FTX.
Frequently asked questions
No. The FSB is an intergovernmental body associated with the G20 and hosted by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel; it has no formal link to the UN system.
Keep learning