These developments make it clear that the domestic banking sector has experienced a sea change in the way it is structured, monitored and supervised. Some of these changes were costly and painful: for instance, resolving more than a dozen banks was never going to be pleasant; neither were three rounds of recapitalization, with substantial effects upon private and public equity holdings.
However, these initiatives helped both systemic banks and less significant institutions in Greece to build significant capital adequacy reserves and buffers. Moreover, one of the effects of the crisis in the Greek banking sector has been the fact that it has been subjected to a series of tests.