The Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) assesses key vulnerabilities the global financial system is exposed to. In normal times, the report seeks to play a role in preventing crises by highlighting policies that may mitigate systemic risks, thereby contributing to global financial stability and the sustained economic growth of the IMF’s member countries.

The analysis in this report was coordinated by the Monetary and Capital Markets (MCM) Department under the general direction of Tobias Adrian, Director. The project was directed by Fabio Natalucci, Deputy Director;Nassira Abbas, Deputy Division Chief; Antonio Garcia Pascual, Deputy Division Chief; Evan Papageorgiou,Deputy Division Chief; Mahvash Qureshi, Division Chief; and Jérôme Vandenbussche, Deputy Division Chief.It benefited from comments and suggestions from the senior staff in the MCM Department.

Individual contributors to the report were Jose Abad, Sergei Antoshin, Adolfo Barajas, John Caparusso, Liumin Chen, Yingyuan Chen, Woon Gyu Choi, Fabio Cortes, Reinout De Bock, Andrea Deghi, Dimitris Drakopoulos, Salih Fendoglu, Ken (Zhi) Gan, Deepali Gautam, Rohit Goel, Pierre Guerin, Sanjay Hazarika, Frank Hespeler, Henry Hoyle, Mohamed Jaber, Phakawa Jeasakul, Oksana Khadarina, Sheheryar Malik, Samuel Mann, Sonia Meskin, Junghwan Mok, Natalia Novikova, Dmitri Petrov, Thomas Piontek, Patrick Schneider, Can Sever, Juan Sole, Tomohiro Tsuruga, Manchun Wang, Jeffrey Williams, Yizhi Xu, Dmitry Yakovlev, Akihiko Yokoyama,and Xingmi Zheng. Input was provided by Parma Bains, Cristina Cuervo, Shuyi Liu, and Nobuyasu Sugimoto.Magally Bernal, Monica Devi, Leroy Perumal, and Andre Vasquez were responsible for word processing.Gemma Rose Diaz from the Communications Department led the editorial team and managed the report’s production with editorial assistance from David Einhorn, Lucy Scott Morales, Nancy Morrison,Katy Whipple/The Grauel Group, Harold Medina (and team), and Vector Talent Resources.

This issue of the GFSR draws in part on a series of discussions with banks, securities firms, asset management companies, hedge funds, standard setters, financial consultants, pension funds, central banks, national treasuries, and academic researchers.

This GFSR reflects information available as of March 24, 2021. The report benefited from comments and suggestions

from staff in other IMF departments, as well as from Executive Directors following their discussions of the GFSR on March 25, 2021. However, the analysis and policy considerations are those of the contributing staff and should not be attributed to the IMF, its Executive Directors, or their national authorities.