No. 33 - Other systemically important institutions: cluster analyses for Italy

The note presents cluster analysis exercises aimed at identifying the optimal number of clusters for classifying Italian banks into homogeneous groups of national systemic importance (O-SII). Cluster analysis is a descriptive statistics technique widely used to support macroprudential policy, also at an international level: the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board have exploited clustering to identify the group of global systemically important institutions and the ECB applied cluster analysis to define a minimum level of buffers for banks identified as O-SII by the national macroprudential authorities of the countries that are part of the SSM (Single Supervisory Mechanism).