Banking Environment and Performance Survey III

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 featured in OCE’s flagship Transition Report (see ‘Research and reports’). Here, we provide economy snapshots capturing the key characteristics of the national banking environments.

Please note that underlying data for BEPS III are not publicly available due to confidentiality agreements with participating banks.