This paper studies the links between of financial soundness indicators and financial crisis episodes controlling for several macroeconomic and fiscal variables in 20 OECD countries. We focus our attention on aggregate capital adequacy, asset quality and bank profitability indicators compiled by the IMF. Our key findings suggest that in times of severe financial crisis regulatory capital to risk weighted assets is increased (by about 0.5–0.6 % points; p.p.) to abide by regulatory and supervisory demands, non performing loans (NPLs) to total loans increase dramatically (by about 0.5–0.6 p.p.), but loan loss provisions lag behind NPLs (they fall by about 12.3–18.8 p.p.) and profitability deteriorates dramatically (returns on assets (equity) fall by about 0.3–0.4 (5.0–7.0) p.p.).