Stress Testing of Commercial Banks’ Exposure to Credit Risk: A Study Based on Write-off Nonperforming Loans

Abstract

This study introduced a stress-testing model with a dummy variable that refers to write-off non-performing loans (NPL) by Agricultural Bank of China. A new variable Y that indicated the rate of NPL in major national commercial banks in terms of logit transformation was applied to test stress tolerance. This article built a regression model on the basis of four explanation variables: the growth rate of GDP, indicator of customer price, the growth rate of supplying nominal currency and indicator of house price. Then we took advantages of VAR model to establish the relationship between variables. Based on the model, diverse scenario was set up to conduct stress test to NPL of commercial banks. The test covered four quarters and discovered that lower growth rate of GDP, slump in CPI, slowdown in supply of nominal currency and surging price of house are in charge of short-term increase in non-performing loans. From long-term perspective, the commercial banks would initiate internal system to mitigate the shock from volatile macro factors.