These are the 17 countries with the safest banks in the world

Jason Baker/Wikimedia Commons (CC)

LONDON – Since the financial crisis, the global banking sector has been forced to cut down on its excesses, lending more conservatively and just generally taking on less risk. But where in the world has the safest banks?

Business Insider decided to take a look into the countries around the world with the safest banks, using the World Economic Forum’s recently-released Global Competitiveness Survey, which offers a bundle of indicators to show the health of a country’s institutions.

One of those is the perceived safeness of banks.

WEF used its executive opinion survey to ask “in general, how do you perceive the soundness of banks?”

So the measure isn’t based on any objective economic or accounting measure, but rather by the perceptions of the population. The countries are ranked from 1 (banks need more money) to 7 (banks are generally sound).

The survey showed that people in the UK and US really don’t trust their banking systems after the 2008 financial crisis. The UK was ranked 59th and the US came in at 24th, below the likes of Guatemala, Panama, and Honduras.

Check out the countries with the safest banks below.