Integrating contagion risk into the 2025 EU-wide stress test: a system-wide analysis with amplification effects between banks and non-banks

This article expands the 2025 EU-wide stress test by incorporating a system-wide perspective to capture contagion risks across investment funds and insurance corporations alongside the banking sector. It examines potential short-term contagion effects under the EBA’s adverse scenario as financial institutions adjust their balance sheets in response to stress. These adjustments would result in additional average CET1 ratio depletion of 29 basis points, increasing first-round effects by 12%. Among institutional sectors, investment funds, in particular equity funds, face the greatest losses under the EBA’s adverse scenario, while banks with less sophisticated hedging capabilities are also significantly affected. The findings emphasise the importance of a holistic, system-wide perspective to capture spillover effects both within and across financial sectors. Furthermore, the results show how solvency-driven liquidity shocks can trigger market reactions, which in turn propagate through the financial system and amplify the losses stemming from initial exogenous shocks. The article also includes two boxes which expand the way in which the EBA methodology accounts for counterparty credit risk. It does so by looking at exposures to additional institutional sectors such as central clearing counterparties (Box 1), and the losses that materialise when the failures of counterparties become more interdependent (Box 2). JEL Classification: D85, G21, G22, G23, G28