Bank Vulnerability Research Articles

Macro and micro of external finance premium and monetary policy transmission

We establish basic facts about the external finance premium. Tens of millions of individual loan contracts extended to euro area firms allow studying the determinants of the external finance premium at the country, bank, firm, and contract levels of disaggregation. At the country level, the variance in the premium is closely linked to sovereign spreads, which are important in understanding financial amplification mechanisms. However, country level differences only explain half of the total variance. The rest is predominantly attributed to variances at the bank and firm levels, which are influenced by the respective balance sheet characteristics. Studying the response of the external finance premium to monetary policy, we find that balance sheet vulnerabilities of banks and firms strengthen the transmission of policy measures to financing conditions. Moreover, our findings reveal an asymmetrical effect contingent on the sign and type of the policies. Specifically, policy rate hikes and quantitative easing measures exert a more pronounced impact on lending spreads, further magnified through their repercussions on the external finance premium.

The 2023 Banking Turmoil and the Bank Term Funding Program

We use high-frequency data to examine the effectiveness of the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) in supporting the liquidity positions of vulnerable banks during the March 2023 banking turmoil. We uncover three key findings. First, our high-frequency data confirm that banks with high reliance on uninsured deposits and large unrealized losses on securities holdings suffered larger deposit outflows at the onset of the episode. Second, the BTFP played an outsized role in meeting these outflows at banks with larger securities losses, reflecting the at-par valuation of securities collateral at the BTFP (banks at the 90th percentile in securities losses replaced 26 cents of every dollar of outflows with BTFP borrowing, compared to only 7 cents on average). Third, in addition to funding loan growth and deposit outflows, banks used the BTFP to build cash holdings, indicating that the program enabled banks to position themselves against potential future funding needs. Overall, we demonstrate that the BTFP enabled banks to meet funding needs and preserve liquidity during the period of stress.

Climate policy uncertainty and bank liquidity creation

This paper examines the influence of Climate Policy Uncertainty (CPU) on the liquidity creation of banks in China. Through an empirical analysis of data from 387 commercial banks in China, our findings indicate that CPU notably diminishes bank liquidity creation. The effect is predominantly observed on the asset side of liquidity, indicating a reduction in credit supply by banks as a response to increased CPU, while the impact on liability side liquidity appears negligible. The study further uncovers significant regional variations in the vulnerability of banks to CPU, highlighting that foreign banks, eastern and middle banks are disproportionately affected.

Macroeconomic conditions and bank failure

AbstractUtilizing a simple time‐varying hazard model, we incorporate nationwide and state‐level economic variables with banking‐industry and bank‐level data to examine U.S. bank failures during 1977–2019. We find that bank‐level financial conditions are more essential in predicting bank failure, although macro factors affect the failure likelihood of vulnerable banks. We also find that banking‐industry market variables are significant predictors. Unlike bank systemic funding cost whose predictive power is subsumed in the presence of macroeconomic variables, banking‐industry market performance has a significantly independent predictive power on bank failure. This finding is novel to existing literature of bank‐failure forecast and has important policy implications.

The Failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the Panic of 2023

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, 2023 brought attention to significant weaknesses across the banking system, leading to a panic that spread to other vulnerable banks. With subsequent failures of Signature Bank and First Republic Bank, the United States had three of the four largest bank failures in its history occur over a two-month period. Several features of the Silicon Valley Bank failure make it an ideal teaching case for explaining the underlying economics of banking (in general) and banking crises (specifically). This paper tries to do that.

Identifying the systemic importance and systemic vulnerability of financial institutions based on portfolio similarity correlation network

The indirect correlation among financial institutions, stemming from similarities in their portfolios, is a primary driver of systemic risk. However, most existing research overlooks the influence of portfolio similarity among various types of financial institutions on this risk. Therefore, we construct the network of portfolio similarity correlations among different types of financial institutions, based on measurements of portfolio similarity. Utilizing the expanded fire sale contagion model, we offer a comprehensive assessment of systemic risk for Chinese financial institutions. Initially, we introduce indicators for systemic risk, systemic importance, and systemic vulnerability. Subsequently, we examine the cross-sectional and time-series characteristics of these institutions’ systemic importance and vulnerability within the context of the portfolio similarity correlation network. Our empirical findings reveal a high degree of portfolio similarity between banks and insurance companies, contrasted with lower similarity between banks and securities firms. Moreover, when considering the portfolio similarity correlation network, both the systemic importance and vulnerability of Chinese banks and insurance companies surpass those of securities firms in both cross-sectional and temporal dimensions. Notably, our analysis further illustrates that a financial institution’s systemic importance and vulnerability are strongly and positively associated with the magnitude of portfolio similarity between that institution and others.

Shadow loans and regulatory arbitrage: Evidence from China

This paper examines how Chinese banks used on-balance sheet shadow loans for regulatory arbitrage and whether the financial market priced in the banks’ use of shadow loans and the resulting vulnerabilities in 2014–2022. It finds that banks chose to window dress their regulatory capital ratio by using shadow loans when their capital adequacy ratio was close to the regulatory minimum. It also shows that banks with a higher shadow loan ratio or a lower breakeven non-performing loan ratio obtained from reverse stress testing faced higher wholesale funding costs. Finally, after the announcement of a rare bank failure event, more vulnerable banks witnessed lower cumulative stock and bond returns.

Disclosure of Bank-Specific Information and the Stability of Financial Systems

Abstract We find that disclosing bank-specific information reallocates systemic risk, but whether it mitigates systemic bank runs depends on the nature of information disclosed. Disclosure reveals banks’ resilience to adverse shocks and shifts systemic risk from weak to strong banks. Yet, only disclosure of banks’ exposure to systemic risk can mitigate systemic bank runs because it shifts systemic risk from more vulnerable banks to those less vulnerable. Disclosure of banks’ idiosyncratic shortfalls of funds does not differentiate such exposure, rendering the resultant reallocation of systemic risk ineffective in mitigating systemic runs.

THE BANKING SYSTEM OF UKRAINE IN WARTIME

This article aims to assess changes in the banking system of Ukraine in 2022 under martial law (at the macro level) and the vulnerability of banks to financial stress (at the micro level). The proposed method uses cluster analysis of the main ratios for banking stability based on the agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm.The analysis of changes at the macro level under martial law shows that anti-stress measures ensured that a significant negative stress reaction was avoided. The analysis of the vulnerability of banks to financial stress shows that a significant number of banks had problems with funding and turned to the Central Bank, but by the end of the year, the funding market had stabilized. The worst situation concerned non-performing loans, but most of those are covered by reserves. Changes in legislation in Ukraine under martial law provided almost 100% coverage of household deposits in banking institutions.

The influence of cyber security on financial fraud in the Nigerian banking industry

The study looked at Financial Institution in Nigeria for how cyber security affects financial fraud in Nigerian banks. The study focused on the following topics: the types of electronic frauds committed in the banking industry, the reasons why cyber fraud occurs in banks, the difficulties in preventing cyber fraud in banks, the impact of cyber fraud on Nigerian banks, and potential solutions for preventing cyber fraud in banks. The two hypotheses that the study is based on. Six Nigeria Banks made up the study's population, which used a survey research design. 557 bank employees were sampled using multistage sampling techniques. The bank staff's responses were gathered using a structured questionnaire, which was then, analyzed using the SPSS statistical package for social science version 27. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the objectives, and multiple regression and Kendal Tau B were used to test the hypotheses. The study's findings indicated that computer viruses, hacking/cracking, phishing, pharming, and accounting fraud by bank employees were the main types of cyber fraud in the banking system. The causes of cybercrime in banks included a lack of line manager or senior manager oversight on deviations from existing electronic processes or controls, current business pressure to meet set targets, collusion between employees and outside parties, insufficient data encryption, the use of third-party services, and parodying. Similarly, the study's findings showed that the challenges impeding the effort to stop cyber fraud in Nigeria's banking system included a lack of standards and national central control, a lack of infrastructure, the internet's vulnerability, a lack of national functional databases, and inadequate awareness by bank customers. A security audit, antivirus and antimalware software, the use of multi-factor authentication, the use of biometrics, and automatic logout were found to be solutions to cybercrime in banks. The findings also showed that financial loss, decreased productivity, and vulnerability of banks' Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems and networks were effects of cybercrime on banks in Nigeria. According to the study's findings, banks' cyberspace security cannot be overextended in Nigeria, so necessary precautions should be taken to reduce cybercrime in Nigeria Banks. The study recommended that Nigeria Banks implement stringent measures to monitor staff activities, particularly in the confidentiality of customer information, cyber security audit be performed by financial institution regularly, sensitization of bank customers, and Multi-factor authentication, biometrics and automatic log out, and strong firewall should be adopted by Nigeria Financial Institutions.

Vulnerable customers' perception of corporate social responsibility in the banking sector in a post-crisis context

PurposeThis research aims to determine to what extent corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions developed by bank entities in Spain improve the vulnerable customers' emotions and quality perception of the banking service. Consequently, this increases the quality of their relationship regarding satisfaction, trust and engagement.Design/methodology/approachData from 734 vulnerable banking customers were analyzed through structural equations modeling (EQS 6.2) to test the relationships of the proposed variables.FindingsVulnerable customers' emotional disposition exerts a strong influence on their perceived service quality. The antecedent effect is concentrated primarily on the CSR towards the client, with a residual secondary weight on the CSR towards society. These positive service emotions are determinants of the outcome quality perceived by vulnerable customers, directly in terms of higher satisfaction and trust and indirectly through engagement.Practical implicationsThis research contributes to understanding how financial service providers should adapt to the specific characteristics and needs of vulnerable clients by adopting a strategy of approach, personalization and humanization of the service that seems to move away from the actions implemented by the banking industry in recent years.Originality/valueThis study has adopted a theoretical and empirical perspective on the impact of CSR on service emotions and outcome quality of vulnerable banking customers. Moreover, banks can adopt a dual conception of CSR: a macro and external scope toward society and a micro and internal scope toward customers.

Systemic risk prevention policies targeting systemically important banks: Does clustering pattern matter?

It is well known that strengthening the soundness of individual banks that are too large or too interconnected is essential for maintaining financial stability. The clustering among homogeneous banks may also cause financial fragility but has received less attention. This paper discusses the policy improvement for preventing systemic risk from the perspective of the clustering pattern of systemically important banks (SIBs) based on a network optimization model. The results show that the clustering pattern of SIBs is closely related to systemic risk contagion. Remarkably, networks with fewer connections among SIBs exhibit lower systemic risk than those featuring apparent clustering of SIBs. The potential mechanism is that the systemic vulnerability of small and medium-sized banks is greatly reduced in the disassortative networks. The proposed tools based on this-inter-SIBs exposure limits and pairwise capital requirements-can guide network optimization and significantly reduce systemic risk. Furthermore, combining existing capital surcharges for SIBs (focusing on the stability of individual SIBs) and proposed network-based tools (focusing on the cluster structure of the network) will be an effective way to enhance financial stability over existing policies.

European Housing Markets at a Turning Point – Risks, Household and Bank Vulnerabilities, and Policy Options

European housing markets are at a turning point as the cost-of-living crisis has eroded real incomes and the surge in interest rates has made borrowers more vulnerable to financial distress. This paper aims to (i) shed light on the risks in European housing markets, (ii) quantify household vulnerabilties, (iii) assess banking sector implications and (iv) examine policies’ effectiveness using simulations based on microdata from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) and EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC). Under the baseline IMF macroeconomic forecast, the share of households that could struggle to meet basic expenses could rise by 10 pps reaching a third of all households by end 2023. Under an adverse scenario, 45 percent of households could be financially stretched, representing over 40 percent of mortgage debt and 45 percent of consumer debt. The impact on the banking sector seems contained under the baseline forecast, though there are pockets of vulnerability. A 20 percent house price correction could deplete CET1 capital by 100-300 basis points. Fiscal measures, such as subsidies to the bottom income tercile, could save 7 percent of households from financial distress at an estimated cost of 0.8 percent of GDP.

Natural disasters and bank stability: Evidence from the U.S. financial system

We show that weather-related natural disasters in the United States significantly weaken the financial stability of banks with business activities in affected regions. This is reflected in higher probabilities of default, lower z-scores, higher non-performing assets ratios, higher foreclosure ratios, lower returns on assets and lower equity ratios of affected banks in the years following a natural disaster. The effects are economically relevant and highlight the financial vulnerability of banks and their borrowers despite insurances and public aid programs.

Reverse stress testing: Scenario design for macroprudential stress tests

AbstractWe propose a systematic algorithmic reverse‐stress testing methodology to create “worst case” scenarios for regulatory stress tests by accounting for losses that arise from distressed portfolio liquidations. First, we derive the optimal bank response for any given shock. Then, we introduce an algorithm which systematically generates scenarios that exploit the key vulnerabilities in banks' portfolio holdings and thus maximize contagion despite banks' optimal response to the shock. We apply our methodology to data of the 2016 European Banking Authority (EBA) stress test, and design worst case scenarios for the portfolio holdings of European banks at the time. Using spectral clustering techniques, we group 10,000 worst‐case scenarios into twelve geographically concentrated families. Our results show that even though there is a wide range of different scenarios within these 12 families, each cluster tends to affect the same banks. An “Anna Karenina” principle of stress testing emerges: Not all stressful scenarios are alike, but every stressful scenario stresses the same banks. These findings suggest that the precise specification of a scenario is not of primal importance as long as the most vulnerable banks are targeted and sufficiently stressed. Finally, our methodology can be used to uncover the weakest links in the financial system and thereby focus supervisory attention on these, thus building a bridge between macroprudential and microprudential stress tests.

Climate factor and banks’ resilience: Evidence from US banks

This study explores how the climate factor impacts the resilience of the US banking system. Using an extended sample of banks, spanning the period 2000-2020, the findings document a negative effect of this climate factor on banks’ resilience. They also highlight the role of climate risk over the post-global financial crisis period. The results could have a substantial value as climate conditions can serve as an early warning system for policymakers and regulators in detecting signs of weakness, calling for immediate actions to mitigate potential vulnerabilities of banks.

Assessment of meander‐bend migration of a major distributary of the Ganges River within Bangladesh

AbstractThe Arial Khan is an important distributary river of the Ganges River within Bangladesh. The river is meandering, and channel shifting and bend migration are common. This study investigates the bend‐scale morphology of 37 characteristic bends of the river using Landsat imageries, river bathymetries, and hydrological data. The morphological changes of the river are correlated with the temporal shifting of its offtake, which in turn is linked to the dynamic behavior of the river in terms of sinuosity, bend geometry, and bend migration. Alterations in the offtake location, bed elevation, and in‐front bar formation are found to control the flow to the river. The sinuosity varies from 1.62 to 1.95 and is linked to the shifting of its offtake. The lifetimes of the bends increase from upstream to downstream with an average lifetime of 24 years. The radii of the bends vary from upper to lower reaches with an average radius of 921 m. The upper reach is more migration prone, and its average migration rate (108 m/year) is more than twice the other two reaches. A higher migration rate of 70–80 m/year is found for the river during 1981–1999 compared to the rates of 45–50 m/year for the rest of the study periods (1972–2021). An envelope curve depicting the relation between the relative curvature of a bend and its migration rate for the river is also developed. The overall morphology from 1972 to 2021 indicates that a significant increase in sinuosity and a reduction in river width and aspect ratio have occurred. The migration rate has declined slightly and the frequency of bend cutoffs has reduced notably in recent years. Nonetheless, due to the high rates of migration, there exists potential future threat to riverbank erosion in some critical bends, and hence damages to land, property, structure, and project on the vulnerable banks.

How vulnerable are interconnected portfolios of South African banks?

Price shocks that propagate through the financial system present a significant risk to financial system stability. This study was an evaluation of the vulnerability of South African banks’ portfolios to pricemediated contagion in the last decade. Using longitudinal data of balance sheet positions of the 10 largest banks from 2010 to 2020, the stress tests were triggered by price shocks on one marketable asset held by all banks: South African government bonds. Overall, the study found that second-order feedback effects from bank deleveraging are muted and that the concentrated structure of the South African banking system has a positive effect on shock absorption. However, a gradual trend towards more similar asset portfolios in the past 10 years has gradually increased exposure to the price-mediated contagion channel. Significance: The paper presents a novel modelling framework to study feedback price-effects in stress tests conducted on the South African banking system. A new data set shows the evolution of South African banks’ portfolio structure and vulnerability by computing two fragility metrics and a portfolio similarity measure. Using this data set, the relationship between banking sector vulnerability and portfolio similarity is tested empirically and it is shown how common asset holdings aggravate systemic risk to pricemediated contagion.

Commercial Banks’ Crime Prevention Strategies Against Armed Robbery Attacks in Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria

Bank robbery is increasingly constituting a serious threat to human safety and security in Nigeria. Thus, the central objective of this study was to investigate the risk factors accounting for the vulnerability of commercial banks to armed robbery attacks despite their adopted crime prevention strategies. The situational crime prevention perspective was employed as a conceptual framework. Data were elicited from chief security officers of 20 commercial banks, 10 bank tellers, and seven officials of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) through a combination of in-depth interviews and key-informant interview methods. Results showed that human factors and logistic issues were contributing to the vulnerability of commercial banks to armed robbery attacks. Although banks are consciously investing in technological and non-technological security systems, criminals still consider them suitable targets. It is imperative for commercial banks to regularly conduct thorough background checks on their staffers so as to ensure early detection of employees with criminal tendencies.

Multi-Dimensional Factor Correlation, Multiple Interbank Network Contagion, and Conditional VaR of Banks

The systemic risk of banks is a multi-dimensional factor correlation and multi-interbank contagion, forming a multi-dimensional multi-correlation (MDMC) contagion risk. After superposition, the multiplier effect magnifies the destructive power of a single impact. In this study, the weighted average method is used to integrate the four interbank contagion paths of jump-diffusion, interbank lending, stock price information, and common assets, establish the multi-level interbank contagion matrix, apply the quantile estimation of the spatial Dubin panel model, estimate the MDMC infectious bank conditional risk value, and decompose and identify the systemically important risk factors, systemically important banks, and systemically vulnerable banks. The following conclusions were drawn. First, the superposition contagion effect of MDMC networks is significant. Second, the systemic importance of default risk, interest rate risk, liquidity risk, and the GDP growth rate of the banking industry is high, followed by changes in stock market returns and investor sentiment. Third, the four major state-owned banks have an MDMC network contagion effect, which has the characteristics of systemic importance and vulnerability.