The Austrian National Bank and Austria’s Financial Market Authority (FMA) published their joint banking supervision priorities for 2026, setting five themes covering bank resilience, information and communication technology (ICT) security, the supervisory treatment of artificial intelligence (AI), the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks, and efficiency in regulation and supervisory processes. Supervisory work on resilience will focus on maintaining strong bank capitalisation and ensuring a sustained reduction in non-performing loan (NPL) ratios, with enhanced monitoring and a greater focus on on-site inspections for banks with elevated NPLs, in a context of geopolitical uncertainty, weak economic conditions and credit risks in real estate and industry. ICT initiatives include supervised controlled cyberattack simulations and the development of a structured dialogue format with relevant national stakeholders. On AI, supervisors will engage banks on concrete applications and develop and communicate a supervisory approach. For ESG risks, the requirements of the European Banking Authority’s ESG risk-management guidelines will be integrated into the supervisory review and evaluation process for less significant institutions (LSI-SREP), and sustainability risks will be addressed in management discussions with supervised firms. Efficiency measures include contributing to European simplification initiatives, assessing the national adoption of European supervisory-process developments, implementing potential efficiencies in national reporting, and evaluating the use of new AI applications to raise supervisory efficiency. The authorities set these joint priorities annually for the following year, and the 2026 themes are intended to be applied in conjunction with the Single Supervisory Mechanism’s supervisory priorities for 2026 and in line with the objectives and work programme of the European Banking Authority.

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