The goal of systemic buffers is to increase the resilience of systemically important commercial banks, which would also increase the sustainability of the whole system. Financial difficulties in systemically important banks can represent a significant threat to the country’s financial stability.

Systemic buffers are set separately for each commercial bank considered to be systemically important. In order to determine which banks this applies to, the NBG considers the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s (BCBS) recommendations and the European Banking Authority’s (EBA) methodology. In addition, the specific characteristics of the Georgian financial sector are taken into consideration. Those characteristics include the share of a bank’s assets in the total banking system, its interaction with other banks, and its substitutability and complexity. Systemic buffers are expressed as a percentage of risk-weighted assets. Systemically important banks should comply with the additional capital buffer requirements presented in the Table below: