By talking of small institutions, this suggests that a qualification criterion for the small banking box would be relatively modest total assets. For example, in Germany, a total assets threshold value of € billion could put more than 80% of institutions into this category. What constitutes large and small in other member states is completely different, however.
To account for this heterogeneity, absolute size would have to be supplemented with relative size. 7 / 13  BIS central bankers' speeches  This could be the ratio of the bank’s total assets to its home country’s economic power or the size of the domestic banking sector, though in this case, too, size isn’t everything.