It stands for systemically liquid assets ratio; a reserve ratio that a bank has to maintain to meet certain liquidity requirements. It is a liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) that is enforced at a statutory or systemic level.

Banks (and possibly other leveraged financial institutions), operating in a system, are usually required to hold a minimum amount of systemically liquid assets (SLAs) to meet certain macroprudential liquidity buffer (MPLB) requirements. In particular, the ratio of a bank’s SLAs to its liabilities minus its regulatory capital (the liquidity measurement base) would be subject to a minimum level (the minimum required SLA ratio, SLAR), below which the MPLB requirements are deemed to be violated.

SLAs represent a type of assets (bank assets) whose value is not correlated with the state of the banking or financial system, particularly at the time of stress or crisis. In other words, these assets would remain liquid and serve liquidity requirements under systemic turbulences. These assets can always be used as a means of payment, quickly convertible into monetary assets (e.g., cash) without loss, or readily be used or posted as high-quality collateral.