Loan-to-deposit (LTD) ratios across the globe have been falling in recent years, as banks have sought to build more resilient balance sheets and demand for loans has decreased. In 2012's Top 1000 World Banks ranking, the global ratio was 99%, one year later it was 90.6% and in 2014 it dipped to 88.1%. In the 2015 ranking, this downward trend has slowed significantly and, for the 944 banks where this information is available, the ratio is 87.24%.
On a regional level, declines in LTD ratios were also less pronounced than in the recent past. The largest change took place in central and eastern Europe, where a 1.82 percentage point drop in the aggregate LTD ratio brought into check an expansion of this figure that the region posted in the 2014 ranking. In the Middle East, the ratio fell by an equally significant 1.8 percentage points, as local banks reduced their exposure to loans. In Africa, the decline was smaller, but enough to give the region the second lowest aggregate LTD ratio globally, at 76.67%. The proportion of African banks with an LTD ratio of more than 100% grew by 5 percentage points, to 8.33%, still the lowest figure worldwide.
