Systemic Risks of Financial Institutions: Importance and Vulnerability

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, forestalling and defusing systemic financial risks has been a hot topic of social concerns. In China, with constant development and innovation of the financial system, higher level financial deepening and openness, and economic downside pressure under new normal” economy, risk-prevention becomes much more complicated. In this case, the financial system should better serve the real economy, reduce financial risks and deepen financial reforms—three tasks of China’s financial work. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China further emphasized that the government should improve the financial regulatory system to forestall systemic financial risks. Therefore, ensuring China’s financial stability and preventing systemic risks have become the priority and major challenges for China’s financial regulatory authorities. Accurate measurement of systemic risks is the basis for risk prevention, the improvement of financial regulations, and any effective regulatory actions. However, existing domestic studies measure financial institutions’ systemic risks from only one aspect—systemic risk contribution or systemic risk exposure, and lack a clear distinction between the two measures in theoretical and policy implications. Some scholars even use systemic risk exposure metrics to measure the systemic risk contribution of financial institutions and assess its systemic importance. Actually, the aggregate risks of financial institutions include both risk contribution and risk exposure—the former focuses on systemic importance while the latter underlines systemic vulnerability, so we should take both sides into risk measurement. This paper uses ΔCoVaR and Exposure-ΔCoVaR to comprehensively measure the systemic risks of financial institutions from both sides—systemic importance and systemic vulnerability. This paper finds no significant correlation between the systemic importance and vulnerability of financial institutions in the cross-sectional dimension, but significant correlation in the time-series dimension, which means the systemic importance and vulnerability of financial institutions change simultaneously and periodically. The results imply that, in China, the systemic importance of bank and insurance industry exceed that of securities industry, while the latter’s systemic vulnerability exceeds that of the former. These differences exist persistently in the time-series dimension. The big four” banks have high systemic importance but low systemic vulnerability, while a handful of financial institutions have both significantly high systemic importance and vulnerability. Furthermore, the size of financial institutions’ asset is an important influencing factor of systemic importance, and the leverage is an important influencing factor of systemic vulnerability, while the margin trading of securities has a significant positive effect on systemic vulnerability but no significant effect on systemic importance. This paper accurately measures the systemic risks of 33 listed financial institutions in China from two aspects—risk contribution and risk exposure, and makes a precise assessment on their systemic importance and vulnerability. We also investigate the influencing factors of financial institutions’ systemic importance and vulnerability. These findings help to understand the systemic risks of China’s financial institutions in cross-sectional and time-series dimensions and correct some wrong perceptions in existing academic studies, and further provide useful empirical references and policy suggestions to China’s financial regulatory authorities to forestall systemic risks and improve macro-regulation. The policy implications of the results are mainly reflected in the following three aspects. First, regulators need to select targeted regulatory objectives and policy tools to make differential regulations based on the features of institutions in systemic importance and vulnerability. Second, different institutions are different in systemic importance and vulnerability, so regulatory authorities should pick out key financial institutions through their performance in systemic importance and vulnerability, and enhance the supervision of key institutions. Third, financial regulators are able to choose proper and effective regulatory tools according to the main drivers of systemic importance and vulnerability.