Notes on Financial Stability and Supervision no. 49 - The composite financial stress indicator for Italy: a methodological update

2 February 2026

Banca d'Italia has been using a composite financial stress indicator for the Italian economy as part of its regular systemic‑risk monitoring activities since 2019. Several years after its introduction, a number of refinements have been implemented to improve the indicator's informational relevance and consistency. Its composition has been updated by including new variables and removing others, and the classification of the indicators that feed into the composite measure has been revised. This recalibration aims to capture financial stress conditions more accurately and to make the contribution of each institutional sector to the overall level of risks to financial stability more traceable.