How Risky Are Banks' Risk Weighted Assets? Evidence From the Financial Crisis
How Risky Are Banks' Risk Weighted Assets? Evidence From the Financial Crisis

Author: Mr.Sonali Das

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 1463933797

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We study how investors account for the riskiness of banks' risk-weighted assets (RWA) by examining the determinants of stock returns and market measures of risk. We find that banks with higher RWA had lower stock returns over the US and European crises. This relationship is weaker in Europe where banks can use Basel II internal risk models. For large banks, investors paid less attention to RWA and rewarded instead lower wholesale funding and better asset quality. RWA do not, in general, predict market measures of risk although there is evidence of a positive relationship before the US crisis which becomes negative afterwards.

How Risky are Banks' Risk Weighted Assets? Evidence from the Financial Crisis
How Risky are Banks' Risk Weighted Assets? Evidence from the Financial Crisis

Author: Sonali Das

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13:

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We study how investors account for the riskiness of banks' risk-weighted assets (RWA) by examining the determinants of stock returns and market measures of risk. We find that banks with higher RWA had lower stock returns over the US and European crises. This relationship is weaker in Europe where banks can use Basel II internal risk models. For large banks, investors paid less attention to RWA and rewarded instead lower wholesale funding and better asset quality. RWA do not, in general, predict market measures of risk although there is evidence of a positive relationship before the US crisis which becomes negative afterwards.

Revisiting Risk-Weighted Assets
Revisiting Risk-Weighted Assets

Author: Vanessa Le Leslé

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2012-03-01

Total Pages: 50

ISBN-13: 1475502656

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In this paper, we provide an overview of the concerns surrounding the variations in the calculation of risk-weighted assets (RWAs) across banks and jurisdictions and how this might undermine the Basel III capital adequacy framework. We discuss the key drivers behind the differences in these calculations, drawing upon a sample of systemically important banks from Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. We then discuss a range of policy options that could be explored to fix the actual and perceived problems with RWAs, and improve the use of risk-sensitive capital ratios.

Heterogeneity of Bank Risk Weights in the EU
Heterogeneity of Bank Risk Weights in the EU

Author: Rima Turk-Ariss

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2017-06-09

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 1484302958

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Concerns about excessive variability in bank risk weights have prompted their review by regulators. This paper provides prima facie evidence on the extent of risk weight heterogeneity across broad asset classes and by country of counterparty for major banks in the European Union using internal models. It also finds that corporate risk weights are sensitive to the riskiness of an average representative firm, but not to a market indicator of a firm’s probablity of default. Under plausible yet severe hypothetical scenarios for harmonized risk weights, counterfactual capital ratios would decline significantly for some banks, but they would not experience a shortfall relative to Basel III’s minimum requirements. This, however, does not preclude falling short of meeting additional national supervisory capital requirements.

Bank Funding Structures and Risk
Bank Funding Structures and Risk

Author: Mr.Francisco F. Vazquez

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 33

ISBN-13: 1463933142

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This paper analyzes the evolution of bank funding structures in the run up to the global financial crisis and studies the implications for financial stability, exploiting a bank-level dataset that covers about 11,000 banks in the U.S. and Europe during 2001?09. The results show that banks with weaker structural liquidity and higher leverage in the pre-crisis period were more likely to fail afterward. The likelihood of bank failure also increases with bank risk-taking. In the cross-section, the smaller domestically-oriented banks were relatively more vulnerable to liquidity risk, while the large cross-border banks were more susceptible to solvency risk due to excessive leverage. The results support the proposed Basel III regulations on structural liquidity and leverage, but suggest that emphasis should be placed on the latter, particularly for the systemically-important institutions. Macroeconomic and monetary conditions are also shown to be related with the likelihood of bank failure, providing a case for the introduction of a macro-prudential approach to banking regulation.

Bank Size and Systemic Risk
Bank Size and Systemic Risk

Author: Mr.Luc Laeven

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2014-05-08

Total Pages: 34

ISBN-13: 1484363728

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The proposed SDN documents the evolution of bank size and activities over the past 20 years. It discusses whether this evolution can be explained by economies of scale or “too big to fail” subsidies. The paper then presents evidence on the extent to which bank size and market-based activities contribute to systemic risk. The paper concludes with policy messages in the area of capital regulation and activity restrictions to reduce the systemic risk posed by large banks. The analysis of the paper complements earlier Fund work, including SDN 13/04 and the recent GFSR chapter on “too big to fail” subsidies, and its policy message is in line with this earlier work.

Benefits and Costs of Bank Capital
Benefits and Costs of Bank Capital

Author: Jihad Dagher

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 1513539337

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The appropriate level of bank capital and, more generally, a bank’s capacity to absorb losses, has been at the core of the post-crisis policy debate. This paper contributes to the debate by focusing on how much capital would have been needed to avoid imposing losses on bank creditors or resorting to public recapitalizations of banks in past banking crises. The paper also looks at the welfare costs of tighter capital regulation by reviewing the evidence on its potential impact on bank credit and lending rates. Its findings broadly support the range of loss absorbency suggested by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the Basel Committee for systemically important banks.

Bank Leverage and Monetary Policy's Risk-Taking Channel
Bank Leverage and Monetary Policy's Risk-Taking Channel

Author: Mr.Giovanni Dell'Ariccia

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2013-06-06

Total Pages: 41

ISBN-13: 1484381130

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We present evidence of a risk-taking channel of monetary policy for the U.S. banking system. We use confidential data on the internal ratings of U.S. banks on loans to businesses over the period 1997 to 2011 from the Federal Reserve’s survey of terms of business lending. We find that ex-ante risk taking by banks (as measured by the risk rating of the bank’s loan portfolio) is negatively associated with increases in short-term policy interest rates. This relationship is less pronounced for banks with relatively low capital or during periods when banks’ capital erodes, such as episodes of financial and economic distress. These results contribute to the ongoing debate on the role of monetary policy in financial stability and suggest that monetary policy has a bearing on the riskiness of banks and financial stability more generally.

Rules of Thumb for Bank Solvency Stress Testing
Rules of Thumb for Bank Solvency Stress Testing

Author: Mr.Daniel C. Hardy

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 67

ISBN-13: 1475514115

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Rules of thumb can be useful in undertaking quick, robust, and readily interpretable bank stress tests. Such rules of thumb are proposed for the behavior of banks’ capital ratios and key drivers thereof—primarily credit losses, income, credit growth, and risk weights—in advanced and emerging economies, under more or less severe stress conditions. The proposed rules imply disproportionate responses to large shocks, and can be used to quantify the cyclical behaviour of capital ratios under various regulatory approaches.