As background for this special issue of the Review, this article provides an overview of recent developments in financial structure in the major industrial countries using national flow of funds balance sheet data. We focus in particular on changes in the size and composition of the balance sheet for the major sectors — households, companies, general government, foreign and financial as well as banks and institutional investors separately. Two recent subperiods are distinguished, namely the ‘great moderation’ of high growth and low inflation from roughly 1997–2006 and then the crisis period 2007–10. We discern elements of convergence — notably in corporate leverage — but also some continuing contrasts — such as household debt — between market- and bank-dominated financial systems, while highlighting that short-run changes arising from the conjuncture may blur longer-term trends in financial structure. Looking ahead, the data highlight common challenges from public and household debt, albeit to an extent that varies markedly between countries. Bank deleveraging and recapitalisation appear slow, while a subsector including shadow banks continues to grow except in the US. There are contrasts between France and Italy on the one hand and Germany on the other which underline the vulnerability of the former in the ongoing Euro Area crisis.

One of the features of the sub-prime crisis, that began in August 2007, was its unexpected nature. It came as a surprise not only to most financial market participants but also in some degree to the policy community. In this context, we seek to assess whether early warning systems based on the logit and binomial tree approaches on the UK and US economies could have helped to warn about the crisis. We also consider a ‘check list approach’ of indicators based on history. Although not all of the complementary approaches are successful, we contend that our work suggests that a broadening of approaches to macroprudential analysis is appropriate.