Key takeaways
- Cross-border bank credit grew by 11% year-on-year, the highest annual growth rate since Q1 2008.
- Bank credit to emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) expanded by $42 billion in Q4 2025, which brought its annual growth rate up to 7%.
- The BIS global liquidity indicators show that foreign currency credit in US dollars and euros continued to grow robustly, both globally and in EMDEs.
Global cross-border bank credit posts a strong expansion
The BIS locational banking statistics (LBS) reveal that global cross-border bank claims rose by $994 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, on an exchange rate- and break-adjusted basis (Graph 1.A).1 This brought the total outstanding stock to $46 trillion.
Cross-border bank credit expanded by $656 billion in Q4 2025 and by 11% in 2025, its highest year-on-year (yoy) growth rate2 since Q1 2008 (Graph 1.B, black line). Its outstanding stock reached $38.1 trillion at end-2025. The expansion in Q4 2025 was primarily driven by cross-border bank loans, which rose by $584 billion. The growth rate of cross-border bank loans has been on a steady upward trajectory since the second half of 2023 (red line). Meanwhile, banks’ debt securities holdings have grown rapidly since 2023. Their yoy growth rate reached 13% in Q4 2023 and remained elevated at 12% in Q4 2025 (blue line).
While cross-border bank credit remains predominantly denominated in major reserve currencies (ie US dollar, euro and Japanese yen), the importance of other currencies has risen since 2019. The trend was most pronounced among borrowers in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs),3 where the share of credit denominated in non-major currencies increased significantly, from 21% at end-2019 to 29% at end-2025 (Graph 2.A). The respective increase was much more subdued in advanced economies (Graph 2.B).
Cross-border bank credit to EMDEs4 increased by $42 billion in Q4 2025, (Graph 3.A), bringing its annual growth rate to 7% (Graph 3.B, black line). Credit to borrowers in emerging Europe as well as Africa and the Middle East led the expansion in 2025, with annual growth rates of 26% and 16%, respectively – the strongest increases in both regions since 2008 (orange and purple lines, respectively). Credit to Latin America and the Caribbean also saw robust growth, with an annual increase of 12%. Among individual EMDE countries, the largest cross-border bank credit inflows in Q4 2025 went to Brazil ($14 billion), Saudi Arabia ($7.5 billion), Türkiye ($6 billion) and Poland ($5 billion). In contrast, cross-border credit to China and the rest of the emerging Asia and Pacific region contracted by 15% yoy and 6.6% yoy, respectively.
The BIS consolidated banking statistics (CBS) measure international banking activity from a nationality perspective, focusing on the country where the banking group’s parent is headquartered. It consolidates positions on the lender side, to track banks’ claims on borrowers residing in specific countries. The benchmark measure is foreign claims, which capture credit to borrowers outside a banking group’s home country. They comprise local claims by banks’ foreign offices and cross-border claims by their offices worldwide.5
The CBS provide insights into banks’ exposures to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries,6 which are currently affected by the conflict in the Middle East. Foreign claims7 on GCC countries have grown steadily over the past decade, nearly doubling between 2015 and 2025. These claims predominantly belong to banks headquartered in the United Kingdom, the United States, the euro area and Japan, which collectively accounted for over 80% of the outstanding stock throughout the past decade (Graph 4.A).8 As of Q4 2025, BIS reporting banks had almost $560 billion in foreign claims on GCC countries. The bulk of these claims were vis-à -vis borrowers in United Arab Emirates ($261 billion), Saudi Arabia ($127 billion), Qatar ($108 billion) and Kuwait ($31 billion) (Graph 4.B). In contrast, against the backdrop of longstanding sanctions, foreign claims on Iran remained very small, amounting to just $44 million on an ultimate guarantor basis.
Global liquidity indicators at end-December 2025
The BIS global liquidity indicators (GLIs) track total credit to non-bank borrowers, covering both loans extended by banks and funding from international bond markets.9 The latter is captured through the net issuance (gross issuance less redemptions) of international debt securities (IDS). The focus is on foreign currency credit denominated in the three major reserve currencies (US dollar, euro and Japanese yen) to non-residents, ie borrowers outside the respective currency areas.
Foreign currency credit denominated in US dollars and euros continued to grow robustly in 2025. Dollar credit expanded by 8.5% yoy, the fastest annual growth since Q3 2014 (Graph 5.A, solid red line). This brought its outstanding stock to $14.3 trillion (Graph 5.B, red line). Euro credit grew at an even higher annual rate of 11% (Graph 5.A, solid blue line), which took its outstanding stock to €4.9 trillion by the end of the year (Graph 5.B, blue line). In contrast, foreign currency credit denominated in Japanese yen contracted by 4.9% during 2025.
In line with global trends, dollar and euro credit to EMDEs expanded significantly over the past decade (Graph 5.C). Dollar credit grew by 35%, rising from $3.2 trillion at end-2015 to $4.3 trillion at end-2025. Over the same period, euro-denominated credit almost doubled, from €437 billion to €858 billion.
The growth in dollar credit to EMDEs since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic can be characterised by three distinct phases (Graph 6.A). Between Q1 2020 and Q2 2022, dollar credit to EMDEs grew at an average annual rate of 5.6%. This phase was followed by a period of contraction starting in Q3 2022, amid US monetary tightening. In Q1 2024, annual growth in dollar credit to EMDEs returned to positive territory.
Regional trends varied across these phases. Dollar credit growth to Africa and the Middle East outpaced its counterparts in other regions for almost the entire post-Covid period. Dollar credit growth to emerging Asia aligned with the broader EMDE trend during the first phase but diverged from it thereafter due to a sustained contraction. In contrast, dollar credit growth to emerging Europe accelerated considerably during the last phase.
During the above period, euro credit to EMDEs followed a broadly similar growth trajectory to dollar credit (Graph 6.B). That said, during the most recent phase of expansion, euro credit grew at a notably faster pace. By end-2025, the annual growth rate of euro credit to EMDEs reached 12%, significantly outpacing the 6.2% growth rate observed for dollar credit.
