AIRCRAFT NEAR MISS AND UNUSUAL INCIDENT COMPILATION

A non-bank financial institution (NBFI) is a financial institution that does not have a full banking license or is not supervised by a national or international banking regulatory agency. NBFIs facilitate bank-related financial services, such as investment, risk pooling, contractual savings, and market brokering.[1] Examples of these include insurance firms, pawn shops, cashier's check issuers, check cashing locations, payday lending, currency exchanges, and microloan organizations.[2][3][4] Alan Greenspan has identified the role of NBFIs in strengthening an economy, as they provide "multiple alternatives to transform an economy's savings into capital investment [which] act as backup facilities should the primary form of intermediation fail NBFIs supplement banks by providing the infrastructure to allocate surplus resources to individuals and companies with deficits. Additionally, NBFIs also introduces competition in the provision of financial services. While banks may offer a set of financial services as a packaged deal, NBFIs unbundle and tailor these service to meet the needs of specific clients. Additionally, individual NBFIs may specialize in one particular sector and develop an informational advantage. Through the process of unbundling, targeting, and specializing, NBFIs enhances competition within the financial services industry.[6]A multi-faceted financial system that includes non-bank financial institutions can protect economies from financial shocks and enable speedy recovery when these shocks happen. NBFIs provide “multiple alternatives to transform an economy's savings into capital investment, [which] serve as backup facilities should the primary form of intermediation fail.”[9] However, in the absence of effective financial regulations, non-bank financial institutions can actually exacerbate the fragility of the financial system. Since not all NBFIs are heavily regulated, the shadow banking system constituted by these institutions could wreak potential instability. In particular, CIVs, hedge funds, and structured investment vehicles, up until the 2007-2012 global financial crisis, were entities that focused NBFI supervision on pension funds and insurance companies, but were largely overlooked by regulators. Because these NBFIs operate without a banking license, in some countries their activities are largely unsupervised, both by government regulators and credit reporting agencies. Thus, a large NBFI market share of total financial assets can easily destabilize the entire financial system. A prime example would be the 1997 Asian financial crisis, where a lack of NBFI regulation fueled a credit bubble and asset overheating. When the asset prices collapsed and loan defaults skyrocketed, the resulting credit crunch led to the 1997 Asian financial crisis that left most of Southeast Asia and Japan with devalued currencies and a rise in private debt.[10] Due to increased competition, established lenders are often reluctant to include NBFIs into existing credit-information sharing arrangements. Additionally, NBFIs often lack the technological capabilities necessary to participate in information sharing networks. In general, NBFIs also contribute less information to credit-reporting agencies than do banks.[11]