The National Bank of Moldova published its banking supervision priorities for 2025–2026, setting out the areas where it will concentrate off-site supervision and on-site inspections to ensure relevant risks in supervised entities are identified, assessed and managed. The priorities are reviewed annually and are based on an assessment of key risks and vulnerabilities, the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) results, and progress against prior priorities. Supervision will focus on corporate governance (including risk culture, board and executive interaction, and conflicts of interest), credit risk and underwriting standards amid a lending rebound (the loan portfolio rose 21.9% over the first 11 months of 2024 to MDL 77,875.8 million, driven mainly by lending to individuals), and interest rate risk in the banking book (IRRBB), including banks’ calculation of economic value sensitivity and risk management as average interest rates fell across loans and deposits between end-2023 and end-November 2024. Priorities also include operational risk (fraud, external events and errors in outsourced processes), a new 2025 bottom-up stress testing round requiring at least one baseline and one adverse scenario using banks’ internal models with scenarios and balance-sheet treatment assumptions provided by the central bank, and oversight of payment and settlement systems and payment services in the context of open banking implementation in 2025, including strong customer authentication, third-party contractual arrangements and monitoring of interchange-fee caps. The agenda further covers AML/CFT supervision across banks and supervised non-bank financial institutions using a risk-based approach, including beneficial ownership, higher-risk customers and sanctions controls, alongside ICT risk and operational resilience assessments (governance, vulnerability management, critical systems monitoring, business continuity testing, penetration testing and outsourced services) supported by an expanded off-site questionnaire. The National Bank of Moldova indicated that the priorities may be adjusted as the risk landscape evolves, and confirmed it plans to run the next bottom-up stress test round during 2025.

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