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Stress testing is an important tool used by financial authorities and entities around the world to evaluate potential risks to the financial system. Kartik Anand, Guillaume Bédard-Pagé and Virginie Traclet discuss different stress-testing approaches, with emphasis on the innovative and analytically rigorous model developed by the Bank of Canada: the MacroFinancial Risk Assessment Framework (MFRAF). They also present the stress-test results obtained in the context of the 2013 Canada Financial Sector Assessment Program led by the International Monetary Fund, including the important contributions made by the use of MFRAF in the exercise.

Deputy Governor Paul Beaudry discusses how financial vulnerabilities present a challenge for monetary policy.

Canada plans to adopt a retail payment system to allow Canadians to pay in real time (or near real time) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, the traditional model for setting the overnight interest rate does not operate 24/7.

The financial system makes an important contribution to the welfare of all Canadians. The ability of households and firms to confidently hold and transfer financial assets is one of the fundamental building blocks of the Canadian economy.

This discussion paper is the third in the Financial Markets Department’s series on the structure of Canadian financial markets. These papers are called “ecologies” because they study the interactions among market participants, infrastructures, regulations and the terms of the traded contract itself.

This article examines the incentives for banks to hold various assets on their balance sheets for use as collateral when the opportunity cost of doing so can be high. Focusing on the five-year period (2002-07) that preceded the financial crisis, it examines the choices made by financial institutions among the assets that are pledged as collateral in Canada's Large Value Transfer System. This serves as a baseline for collateral-management practices during relatively normal times. The results of this study are important for policy-makers, especially the Bank of Canada, which is concerned both about the efficient functioning of fixed-income markets and about the credit risk it ultimately bears in insuring LVTS settlement. The results suggest that relative market liquidity and market-making capacity are important factors in the choice of securities pledged as collateral in the LVTS.

The Bank of Canada today released a report by Professor Duncan McDowall of Carleton University entitled Due Diligence: A report on the Bank of Canada's handling of foreign gold during World War II.

Can securities be settled on a blockchain and, if so, what are the gains relative to existing settlement systems? We consider a blockchain that ensures delivery versus payment by linking transfers of assets with payments and operates using a proof-of-work protocol. The main benefit of a blockchain is faster and more flexible settlement, whereas the challenge is to avoid settlement fails when participants fork the chain to get rid of trading losses.