Banking Union Research Articles

Failing or likely to fail: banking union cooperation tested since 2017

ABSTRACT The creation of the Banking Union (BU) has been a significant leap towards further integration in the euro area. BU cooperation is critical for efficient supervisory and resolution actions, even more so for cross-border banks that may face legal and institutional differentiation. Cooperation takes place within the two BU pillars – the Single Supervisory Mechanism and the Single Resolution Mechanism – and together with authorities of non-participating Member States and of third countries in a cross-border setting. The Article examines how the two mechanisms dealt with Failing or Likely to Fail (FOLTF) and resolution cases from 2017 until early 2022. FOLTF cases have tested existing cooperation frameworks and prompted new cooperation vehicles and mechanisms within the BU, in its immediate EU periphery and with third countries. Cooperation is a prerequisite of functioning mechanisms; it lays the foundations for further integration within the BU; and helps consolidating equivalence with third countries.

Developing banking union’s common supervisory culture: a look into the ‘black box’ of joint supervisory teams

ABSTRACT The accomplishment of the Banking Union’s common supervisory culture or the implementation of consistent supervisory practices and standards across participating Member States, critically depends on the cooperation of national competent authorities throughout the supervisory process, which takes place primarily in Joint Supervisory Teams (JSTs). Because of their mixed, multilevel composition, JSTs allow the cross-comparison of varying national supervisory approaches and facilitate the identification of best practices as building blocks of a shared supervisory outlook on prudential concerns. This paper unpacks the ‘black box’ of JSTs through the lens of experimentalist governance and with a qualitative examination of data from various sources, including semi-structured interviews with JST-participants. It reveals the importance of NCAs in JSTs experimentalist practice as well as of soft governance tools in fostering a sense of community and highlights specific operational challenges in close cooperation that limit the reach of the common supervisory culture beyond the euro area.

Business model contributions to bank profit performance: A machine learning approach

This paper examines the relation between bank profit performance and business models, using a machine learning–based approach. The analysis contributes to the literature on this relation by considering the bank portfolio’s ability to yield profits as the identification criterion of strategic profiles and by including all the components of the business model simultaneously in the identification process. Our research strategy is applied to the European Union banking system from 1997 to 2021. The paper’s primary finding indicates that specialization seems to be a strategy that results in banks adopting business profiles with better profit performance, particularly if the banks specialize in the standard retail-oriented model.

Bank business models, size, and profitability

To examine the relation between profitability and business models (BMs) across bank sizes, the paper proposes a research strategy based on machine learning techniques. This strategy allows for analyzing whether size and profit performance underlie BM heterogeneity, with BM identification being based on how the components of the bank portfolio contribute to profitability. The empirical exercise focuses on the European Union banking system. Our results suggest that banks with analogous levels of performance and different sizes share strategic features. Additionally, high capital ratios seem compatible with high profitability if banks, relative to their size peers, adopt a standard retail BM.

A Regulatory Perspective on the Actual Challenges for the European Deposit Insurance Scheme

The European financial regulation is evolving with new and specific forms of cooperation for the member states, enhancing concepts and innovative rule of law, particularly featuring the actual level of harmonization. This paper investigates the European deposit insurance scheme, in the context of the European law development, in reply to the current economic and social challenges and in accordance with the principles of the free market. The methods of research include a theoretical investigation of the relevant literature, a comparison of the proposed regulation and regulation in force, synthesis, and deduction. The research results are based on the assessment of the progress of negotiation in building efficient mechanisms to stimulate money saving conduct for individuals and legal persons, globally and within the European Union. Acknowledging the status of the three pillars of the European banking union legislative package, the member states have unanimously agreed that the framework established by the Directive from 2014 needed a bracing approach, to ensure more protection and to support enhanced financial integration. The analysis carried out showed the importance of the European deposit insurance scheme in the context of the present global challenges. The money saving conduct was strongly influenced by the regulation for the deposit guarantee mechanism, while the tight estimated agenda for the final regulatory proposal asks for ingenious cooperation to reach a consensus within members states. The research showed the imperative to build common legislation for the member states and a future direction of investigation to evaluate the effects of the gap between the domestic regulation and milestone generated by the European directives in each state legal framework.

Sovereign bail‐outs and fiscal rules in a banking union*

AbstractIn this paper, we study optimal fiscal rules in a two‐country economy in which cross‐country linkages between sovereign debts and banking sectors motivate bail‐outs among countries. The first‐best sovereign borrowing, which is contingent on the output gap between the countries, cannot be achieved in the presence of asymmetric information on a country's potential output. Because bail‐out induces overborrowing, fiscal rules can be implemented to prevent the ensuing inefficiency. A mechanism can be designed to induce a country with low potential output (i.e., a small negative output gap) to run an optimal budget deficit upon receiving a transfer (ex post) from the other country. We characterize conditions under which this fiscal mechanism Pareto dominates a “cyclically adjusted” fiscal rule imposing a unique ceiling on a country's borrowing, independently of its potential output. We apply our setting to a discussion of the implications for fiscal rules within the European Monetary Union.

Rethinking anti-money laundering supervision: The Single Supervisory Mechanism - a model for a European anti-money laundering supervisor?

Whereas the prudential supervision of credit and other financial institutions has been a core policy concern of the EU legislator in the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis, the supervision of private sector entities within the European Anti-Money Laundering framework has been subject to less attention. However, on 20 July 2021, the European Commission intervened and published legislative proposals for two regulations and one directive, meant to boost the European response to the phenomenon of Money Laundering. This contribution – after having pointed out the shortcomings of the current legislative framework – pursues a twofold objective: first, offering an in-depth analysis of whether the Single Supervisory Mechanism, set up within the banking union for the purposes of prudential supervision, might be a useful precedent of Europeanisation to build up upon in matters of Anti-Money Laundering supervision, and second, commenting the possible approaches to be taken when setting up an EU level Anti-Money Laundering supervisor. The systemic cross-border importance of AML – beyond the euro area – warrants the establishment of a new EU agency specialised on AML, invested with more supervisory powers than EBA, ESMA and EIOPA and taking over the direct supervision of high-risk obliged entities, while indirectly supervising the remaining entities. It is argued furthermore that such institutional reform should necessarily be accompanied by the establishment of a Single Rulebook, which enjoys direct applicability across the EU.

Deciding upon the Banking Union: How a joint belief shift instigated deep institutional change in Eurozone governance

AbstractThis paper explores how a joint belief shift among policy actors in the Eurozone crisis led to a deep institutional change in Eurozone governance: the banking union. Based on Rinscheid's framework of institutional change, we apply discourse network analysis (DNA) of actor statements in European newsmedia to show how banking union ideas emerged and gained ground between 2000 and 2012. We complement the DNA with analysis of secondary sources to provide explanations of how the rise and dissemination of banking union ideas came about. Our findings show that potential junctures in a crisis provide opportunities for policy actors to exploit and instigate a joint belief shift, but only if certain critical antecedents allow for this. Our study complements EU policy analysis studies by offering a fine‐grained theory and methodology to assess and understand the role of (coalitions of) key policy actors and their ideas in processes of EU institutional change.

Completing Banking Union? The Role of National Deposit Guarantee Schemes in Shifting Member States' Preferences on the European Deposit Insurance Scheme

AbstractThe gridlock on the European deposit insurance scheme (EDIS), the missing pillar of the banking union, is most commonly attributed to moral hazard concerns on the side of Germany. However, Member State preferences on EDIS cannot be understood solely based on concerns over pre‐emptive risk reduction. Instead, banking sector interests connected to the institutional setup and legal status of national deposit guarantee schemes (DGSs) have also informed these preferences. This article examines the development of preference formation on EDIS for the cases of Germany, Italy and France after the initial 2015 proposal failed. National preferences on the institutional setup of EDIS have become more aligned with a reinsurance system that maintains existing DGS. Hence, current trajectories point to a discussion over how national DGSs are to be linked in a reinsurance system, instead of a discussion about whether it should be abandoned or not.

Does nonperforming loan securitization affect credit default swap spreads? Evidence from European banks

AbstractWe contribute to the growing literature on bank risk management by examining the credit risk implications of nonperforming loan (NPL) management during the period 2012–2020. We construct a unique database with 116 NPL deals by 31 European Union (EU) banks. Our study is motivated by the hypothesis that NPL securitization has a beneficial effect on bank loan quality and that this effect is incorporated in the bank's credit default swap (CDS) spread. Our analysis finds a statistically significant decline in a bank's CDS spread in the days leading up to and shortly after the announcement of an NPL securitization. This suggests that the CDS market views NPL securitization as a de‐risking activity and a means of risk mitigation. The impact is even more evident for NPL securitization with a government guarantee which may offer additional credibility to these de‐risking activities.

Трансформация денежно-кредитной политики ЕС в условиях финансовой нестабильности

Challenges the European economy began to face 12 years ago raised the question about actions European Central Bank (ECB) have to undertake to maintain the financial sustainability, considering its objective to ensure price stability while coping with a changed economic environment. Provision that the ECB is obliged to take efforts to ensure financial stability as well as potentially serious consequences of crisis’ impact on the banking system and industrial production, led to an expansion of its role beyond standard monetary policy measures, with the unconventional steps being taken in addition to conventional to combat the adverse impact of the financial crisis. While reducing the interest rate, ECB also provided a cheap financial capital for banks via fixed-rate “Long Term Refinancing Operations” (LTROs), and three “Covered Bond Purchase Programmes” (CBPP). Purchases of debt securities were also conducted via “Securities Market Programme” (SMP) and, later, with then ECB’s President Mario Draghi declaring that ECB will do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro”, possibility of their increase was announced with the start of “Outright Monetary Transactions” (OMT) Programme. A mere announcement of the OMT was enough to calm financial markets, as none of the eurozone countries applied for financial support within this programme’s framework. Then ECB proceeded with a full-fledged quantitative easing, starting to buy sovereign bonds under its Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP), having spent 2.6 trillion € on its implementation. Understanding that a monetary union without an efficient banking union is unacceptably dangerous, the European Banking Union, under which supervision of largest eurozone banks has transferred directly to the ECB, was progressively established. While ECB’s anti-crisis policies achieved their goals, prolongation of the strategy it adopted may create new risks for the financial stability of the euro area, such as excessive dependence of credit institutions on monetary support and excessive inflationary risks under a zero interest-rate policy. Still, EU institutions’ coordinated financial management played an important role in overcoming the existing turbulence, with fiscal and monetary policy measures reinforcing each other.

Several remarks on the monetary policy of EU related to the position of National Bank of Slovakia and a vision for The European Banking Union

This article is divided into three parts – each concerning the monetary policy of EU. First part deals with relationships between monetary policy of EU and economic policy of EU. Second part is central to the research goal of this article. In this part the similarities and differences between the status of National bank of Slovakia and European Central Bank are compared according to their respective roles and functions. Last part of the article describes legal framework of European banking union as a corner stone of future development of monetary policy of EU.

European Deposit Insurance Scheme(s) – Consequences for the EU’s Financial Stability

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the potential consequences that the shortcomings in harmonising the national deposit guarantee schemes may have on the financial stability of the European Union. The relevance of this subject is underlined both by the European Commission’s intention to revive the European Deposit Insurance Scheme project in 2021 and the recent signals from Germany that they are willing to support the initiative. The paper presents a review of the discussions on establishing a European Deposit Insurance Scheme, the reasons for the project’s failure and the consensus solution that took the form of the Deposit Guarantee Scheme Directive (DGSD). The limited scope of deposit guarantee scheme harmonisation under this directive is discussed in the context of the related EBA opinions pointing to different areas of potential improvements. Differences in national implementation are also reviewed in terms of their potential impact on financial stability. Apart from a careful literature review, statistical analysis of the available financial information characterizing the largest national deposit schemes of the euro is performed to quantify their progress towards the target level of the available financial means. The results prove that most national schemes are still far from reaching the 0.8% target level of readily available funds and that potentially desirable amendments to the DGSD may drag them even further away from reaching that target by 2024. The author concludes that from the perspective of financial stability, the EU should focus on establishing a single scheme at an international level that would complete the project of establishing a banking union. The results contribute to the ongoing discussion on the need to further integrate the national deposit guarantee schemes inside the EU.

Regulatory and bailout decisions in a banking union

We model a banking union of two countries whose banking sectors differ in their average probability of failure and externalities between the two countries arise from cross-border bank ownership. The two countries face (i) a regulatory (supervisory) decision of which banks are to be shut down before they can go bankrupt, and (ii) a bailout decision of who pays for banks that have failed despite regulatory oversight. Each of these choices can either be taken in a centralized or in a decentralized way. In our benchmark model the two countries always agree on a centralized regulation policy. In contrast, bailout policies are centralized only when international spillovers from cross-border bank ownership are strong, and banking sectors are highly profitable.

An alternative mean-variance portfolio theoretical framework:Nigeria banks’ market shares analysis

The ground-laying objective of portfolio conception is nothing but to allot optimally, the investment among financial assets, and a wide range of products held by investors for immediate or long-time decision. The article aims to provide both the theoretical and experimental analysis of estimating portfolio asset indexes. The technique for estimating mixing weights of each asset for proper optimization of the portfolio was described and the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) technique was employed in the estimation of their returns and volatilities. Twelve (12) new generation (commercial and merchant) banks’ yearly market shares’ portfolios from 2001 to 2017 were analyzed. The mixing weights describing the contributing efficient frontiers carved-out U.B.A and Zenith banks to be the frontiers in the commercial banks’ shares portfolio with 0.272 and 0.202 mixing weights respectively. Additionally, the 99% confidence level of the Expected-Shortfall (ES), was higher in WEMA, UNION, ACCESS, Diamond, and FCMB banks with 20.6004%, 14.7637%, 14.6458%, 15.3011%, and 16.9373% respectively. Keywords: Asset; Expected-Shortfall; Mixing Weight; Ordinary Least Squares; Portfolio

Integration in banking efficiency: a comparative analysis of the European Union, the Eurozone, and the United States banks

PurposeThis paper investigates the development of efficiency and the progress of banking integration in the European Union by checking for convergence among banks of European and Eurozone countries as well as contrasting the results with those of United States banks.Design/methodology/approachInitially, we employ the two-stage semi-parametric double bootstrap DEA method, which absorbs the effects of possible integration barriers in the measurement of efficiency. Afterwards, we apply a panel data model, in order to investigate the process of banking integration by testing for convergence and for convergent clusters in banking efficiency.FindingsOur main findings show that the bank efficiency of the US is considerably higher than that of the Eurozone and the European Union. Although there is no evidence of convergence across the banking groups, our results indicate the presence of club convergence. We also conclude that the US banking system is closer to convergence than the Eurozone and the European Union banks. Nevertheless, this outcome is subject to change in the future due to the fact that Eurozone and European Union banks' speed of convergence is higher than that of US banks.Originality/valueOur survey is unique in trying to check for convergence while controlling for country-specific and bank-specific factors that affect the efficiency of European and Eurozone banks. Moreover, recent literature does not compare the convergence of efficiency of Eurozone, European and US banking. Finally, in our paper special consideration was given to the comparison of commercial, cooperative and savings banks, as subsets of our banking groups.

Possible Directions of Evolution for Banking Activity in European Union under the Impact of Blockchain Technology

European Union banking industry is subject to numerous changes in the daily activities performed, having to adapt the business to a wide range of impacting factors. Among these, the blockchain technology has a significant potential in updating the current context, aspect highlighted by academic environment, researchers and innovation specialists. Current research paper has the intent to identify the areas where the blockchain technology could impact the EU banking industry, analyse the scenarios and make possible praises for the evolution of business in banking.

Banks’ risk and the impact of audit quality on income smoothing

Research question: This paper investigates the impact that specific audit quality dimensions have upon European Union Banks’ income smoothing behavior. Motivation: Although previous studies have investigated the characteristics of audit quality, little is known about the audit quality in the banking sector. Excessive risk taking and business complexity may further impair auditors’ work and an audit’s outcome may be conditioned upon banks’ risk. Idea: We examine whether auditors’ independence influences bank managers’ decision to smooth income and whether this attribute depends on bank risk and systemic importance. We investigate the association between auditors’ industry specialization and auditors’ tenure with the level of Loan Loss Provisions Data: We use a sample of 133 banks from 26 European Union countries for the period 2006-2013. Tools: Similar to previous research, we use ordinary least squares analysis to test the results. Findings: Empirical findings provide evidence that the auditors’ industry expertise limits management’s discretion of high-risk banks to a greater extent relative to low risk banks. In contrast, our results imply that banks that retain the same auditor for a consecutive fiscal year are more likely to engage in income smoothing through LLPs. Furthermore, our study examines whether audit quality dimensions have different outcomes on income smoothing decisions between globally systemically important banks (GSIBs) and the rest of banks. Our results provide evidence that the impact of industry specialization and auditor tenure on EU banks accounting policy decisions differs between GSIBs and non-GSIBs. Contribution: Our analysis contributes in the existing body of research by focusing on the impact of audit quality on managements’ accounting discretion and the influence of banks’ special attributes on the audit process.

L' erompere della vigilanza bancaria europea

The essay aims at offering a critical assessment of Euroepan banking supervision, as it has been entrusted to the European Central Bank in the framework of the so-called “first pillar” of the Euroepan banking union. After discussing the peculiarities of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, including the delicate financial crisis in which it was created, the essay critically analyzes, from a legal point of view, the function of banking supervision and, finally, presents a unique perspective on its actual functioning.

THE LIQUIDITY AND PROFITABILITY TRADEOFF OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN NIGERIA

This study used empirical facts and assessed the trade-off of profitability versus liquidity (and vice versa) for five commercial banks in Nigeria. Multivariate research design, regression analysis, Ordinary Least Square, and correlation coefficient approaches were used to apply quantitative methodologies to data collected. Amongst the population of twenty-two banks, Zenith, First, United Bank for Africa, Guaranteed Trust and Union Banks were chosen as case studies for this study using a purposive sample approach. Secondary data was gathered from their five-year annual reports, which were published between 2015 and 2019. The correlation coefficient was employed to test the hypothesis, which revealed that there was a statistically perfect correlation (positive and negative) between LA (loans), BA (bank advances), and MDI (marketable debt instruments) against PAT (profit after tax) and ROA (return on assets). Furthermore, since banks strive to maintain their current assets, the findings revealed that efficient liquidity management is a key determinant that may boost or impair a bank’s profitability. To avoid future insolvency and bankruptcy, this study recommends that these banks use contemporary and effective liquidity management strategies amid the current post-pandemic environment. In addition, while focusing on the same topic of research, interested scholars should make significant use of a broader data coverage area.