Integrated Brief

Reserve Buffer (Reserves + ON RRP ÷ Bank Assets)

As of 2026-09-30, the Reserve Buffer (Reserves + ON RRP ÷ Bank Assets) stood at 11.41%, up 0.11 pp from the prior reading, at the 1st percentile of the past 5 years. Bank reserves plus ON RRP as a share of total commercial-bank assets — the banking system's cash cushion. It is scored in the DLI (Policy / Reserves tier), but only below 14%: there a draining net-liquidity flow counts for more (up to 2.5× at the 2019 repo-crisis floor of 8%; an injection is never scaled up), and a capped scarcity term adds tightness that cannot by itself push the score into the Tight zone. At 14% or above it has no effect on the score, and the raw level is never ranked as a percentile. A falling ratio (TGA refills, ON RRP exhausted, reserves sliding) means a thinner margin of safety even when the flow reads loose. It halved from ~26% (2021-22) to ~12% (2026).