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The summer Business Outlook Survey points to a diverging outlook across regions. While there are some encouraging signs, owing in part to strengthening U.S. demand, weak oil prices continue to significantly dampen economic perspectives in affected sectors and regions.

The survey results suggest that, overall, business-lending conditions were broadly unchanged during the second quarter of 2015.

The authors present the four common cyclical vulnerabilities that appear in financial systems, providing examples of qualitative and quantitative indicators used to monitor these vulnerabilities across different sectors. They also discuss other inputs to the vulnerability assessment and to the internal process used at the Bank of Canada for identifying, evaluating and communicating vulnerabilities and risks, and highlight some of the key challenges in assessing financial system vulnerabilities and risks.

The authors examine the liquidity and leverage characteristics of Canadian long-term, open-end mutual funds in terms of their potential systemic effects on the Canadian mutual fund sector and on the Canadian financial system more broadly. In their overall assessment of this sector, they consider the regulation, market size and ownership structure of mutual funds in Canada and provide observations about the industry globally.