BEPS III
The third round of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) Banking Environment and Performance Survey (BEPS) was conducted in 34 economies in 2020-21. In total, 345 banks took part.
The BEPS III survey was organised by the EBRD’s Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) and funded by the EBRD Shareholder Special Fund. For the first time, the BEPS survey was split into two parts, one answered by the bank’s chief executive officer and the other by its head of credit. Different topics were discussed in each. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, all interviews took place in a virtual face-to-face format over Zoom or similar software between Q4 2020 and Q2 2021.
The purpose of BEPS III was to build on previous waves of the survey by including repeat questions on topics such as bank lending activity, lending technologies and the competitive environment. It also covered a number of new areas, such as fintech, social and climate issues, as well as detailed questions on bank activities during the Covid-19 pandemic.
For BEPS III to be nationally representative, the sample was drawn from the commercial, cooperative and savings banks active at the time of sampling. To form the target sample, banks were ranked from largest to smallest in each country and the largest banks were selected until 95 per cent of each country’s total banking assets were included. Taking attrition into account, participating banks accounted for just over 75 per cent of all banking assets in the economies that took part in BEPS III.
The BEPS III project also includes data on the location of bank branches. As part of BEPS III, a specialised team of consultants collected the geolocations of all bank branches in the EBRD regions.
BEPS III data have already featured in OCE’s flagship Transition Report. Here, we provide economy snapshots capturing the key characteristics of the national banking environments.
Please note that underlying data for BEPS III are not publically available due to confidentiality agreements with participating banks.
BEPS II
The second round of the EBRD Banking Environment and Performance Survey (BEPS) was conducted in 32 countries among a total of 611 banks.
The BEPS II Survey was jointly undertaken by the EBRD and the European Banking Center (EBC) at Tilburg University. As with BEPS I, a common questionnaire was administered to the bank’s CEO in a face-to-face interview.
The purpose of the BEPS II was to build on BEPS I and obtain data on the activities, funding and risk management of banks, their lending technologies, their competitive environment, the influence of foreign parent banks and senior management’s perceptions of legal and regulatory systems. Information was obtained for two points in time: 2007 and 2010. BEPS II also contains a more detailed follow-up survey which banks completed independently. This follow-up was completed by 337 banks.
Finally, as part of BEPS II a specialised team of consultants collected geographical coordinates of over 137,000 bank branches across EBRD’s countries of operations.
The results of the survey have now been summarised in short country-by-country snapshots that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the banking environment in each individual country.
The BEPS data has been utilised for various analyses in past years, including the Transition Report 2006 and journal articles (see 'Related documents'). Please note that the underlying data is not publicly available due to confidentiality agreements with the participating banks.
