Bank Funding Risk Research Articles

Bank Funding Risk, Reference Rates, and Credit Supply

Bank Funding Risk, Reference Rates, and Credit Supply

Bank Funding Risk, Reference Rates, and Credit Supply

Bank Funding Risk, Reference Rates, and Credit Supply

Bank Funding Risk, Reference Rates, and Credit Supply

Bank Funding Risk, Reference Rates, and Credit Supply

A New Indicator of Bank Funding Cost

The cost of bank funding on money markets is typically the sum of a risk-free rate and a spread that reflects rollover risk, i.e., the risk that banks cannot roll over their short-term market funding. This risk is a major concern for policymakers, who need to intervene to prevent the funding liquidity freeze from triggering the bankruptcy of solvent financial institutions. We construct a new indicator of rollover risk for banks, which we have called forward funding spread. It is calculated as the difference between the three-month forward rate of the yield curve constructed using only instruments with a three-month tenor and the corresponding forward rate of the default-free overnight interest swap yield curve. The forward funding spread usefully complements its spot equivalent, the IBOR-OIS spread, in the monitoring of bank funding risk in real time. First, it accounts for the market participants' expectations for how funding costs will evolve over time. Second, it identifies liquidity regimes, which coincide with the levels of excess liquidity supplied by central banks. Third, it has much higher predictive power for economic growth and bank lending in the United States and the euro area than the spot IBOR-OIS, credit default swap spreads or bank bond credit spreads.

The interest rate pass-through in the euro area during the sovereign debt crisis

We investigate the pass-through of monetary policy to bank lending rates in the euro area during the sovereign debt crisis, in comparison to the pre-crisis period. We make the following contributions. First, we use a factor-augmented vector autoregression, which allows us to assess the responses of a large number of country-specific interest rates and spreads. Second, we analyze the effects of monetary policy on the components of the interest rate pass-through, which reflect banks' funding risk (including sovereign risk) and markups charged by banks over funding costs. Third, we not only consider conventional but also unconventional monetary policy. We find that while the transmission of conventional monetary policy to bank lending rates has not changed with the crisis, the composition of the pass-through has changed. Specifically, expansionary conventional monetary policy lowered sovereign risk in peripheral countries and longer-term bank funding risk in peripheral and core countries during the crisis, but has been unable to lower banks' markups. This was not, or not as much, the case prior to the crisis. Unconventional monetary policy helped decreasing lending rates, mainly due to large shocks rather than a strong propagation.

The impact of bank size and funding risk on bank stability

AbstractDoes bank size significantly explain the variations in bank stability? Does bank funding risk significantly impact bank stability? This paper addresses these two questions with data from the rural banking industry in Ghana. Controlling for credit risk, liquidity risk, diversification in the business model, profitability, inflation, financial structure and gross domestic product, the results suggest that an increase in the size of a rural bank results in an increase in its stability. The results also show that funding risk positively impacts bank stability. The positive relationship between size and bank stability has important repercussions for the current debate on whether or not to constrain bank size to insulate the financial system from future crisis. The positive relationship between funding risk and bank stability also has important implications for the current debate on funding of retail banks.

The Interest Rate Pass-Through in the Euro Area During the Sovereign Debt Crisis

We investigate the pass-through of monetary policy to bank lending rates in the euro area during the sovereign debt crisis, in comparison to the pre-crisis period. We make the following contributions. First, we use a factor-augmented vector autoregression, which allows us to assess the responses of a large number of country-specific interest rates and spreads. Second, we analyze the effects of monetary policy on the components of the interest rate pass-through, which reflect banks' funding risk (including sovereign risk) and markups charged by banks over funding costs. Third, we not only consider conventional but also unconventional monetary policy. We find that while the transmission of conventional monetary policy to bank lending rates has not changed with the crisis, the composition of the IP has changed. Specifically, expansionary conventional monetary policy lowered sovereign risk in peripheral countries and longer-term bank funding risk in peripheral and core countries during the crisis, but has been unable to lower banks' markups. This was not, or not as much, the case prior to the crisis. Unconventional monetary policy helped decreasing lending rates, mainly due to large shocks rather than a strong propagation.

Risk aversion, bank funding risk and futures hedging

In this article, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data on Bank Participation in Futures Markets is used to examine specific characteristics of futures hedging by financial firms at a level of detail that has not so far been reported in the literature. The article analyzes quantity and rate risks hedged by banks, the sensitivity of observed futures hedging positions to changes in market variables and the impact of risk aversion on hedging behavior. The results indicate that while bank futures hedging positions are insensitive to quantity risks they are far more sensitive to rate changes. I also find that commonly used simplifying assumptions in this literature (constant absolute risk aversion, forward market unbiasedness) are not supported by actual hedging data.