Sachin Galaiya
The interest-only product has undergone tremendous evolution, from its mass-market glory days in the run-up to the crisis, to its rebirth as a niche product. However, since reaching a low-point in 2016, the interest-only market is starting to show signs of life again as lenders re-enter the market.
Filed under Financial Stability, Housing market, Microprudential Regulation
Fernando Cerezetti, Emmanouil Karimalis, Ujwal Shreyas and Anannit Sumawong
When a trade is executed and cleared though a central counterparty (CCP), the CCP legally becomes a buyer for every seller and a seller for every buyer. When a CCP member defaults, the need to establish a matched book for cleared positions means the defaulter’s portfolio needs to be closed out. The CCP then faces a central question: what hedges should be executed before the portfolio is liquidated so as to minimize the costs of closeout? In a recent paper, we investigate how distinct hedging strategies may expose a CCP to different sets of risks and costs during the closeout period. Our analysis suggests that CCPs should carefully take into account these strategies when designing their default management processes.
Filed under Financial Markets, Financial Stability, Market Infrastructure
Oliver Brenman, Frank Eich, and Jumana Saleheen
The conventional wisdom amongst financial market observers, academics, and journalists is that a steeper yield curve should be good news for bank profitability. The argument goes that because banks borrow short and lend long, a steeper yield curve would raise the wedge between rates paid on liabilities and received on assets – the so-called “net interest margin” (or NIM). In this post, we present cross-country evidence that challenges this view. Our results suggest that it is the level of long-term interest rates, rather than the slope of the yield curve, that drives banks’ NIMs.
Filed under Banking, Financial Markets, Financial Stability, Monetary Policy
Carlos Eduardo van Hombeeck
The UK has a comparative advantage in financial services. But specialisation in this activity brings with it the challenge of the large gross capital flows that are linked to financial services exports.
Filed under Bitesize, Financial Stability, International Economics
Ben Guttman-Kenney, Liam Kirwin, Sagar Shah
Consumer credit growth has raised concern in some quarters. This type of borrowing – which covers mainstream products such as credit cards, motor finance, personal loans and less mainstream ones such as rent-to-own agreements – has been growing at a rapid 10% a year. What’s been driving this credit growth, and how worried should policymakers be?
Rajveer Berar
What could falls in sterling mean for UK firms’ ability to sustain foreign currency (FX) debt obligations? The value of sterling began falling around two years ago and dropped further after the EU referendum – remaining around these lower values ever since. There is every possibility that sterling may stay low for the foreseeable future – creating both potential winners and losers. In this piece, I investigate one particular channel for losses related to sterling weakness: whether UK firms could find meeting their FX debt obligations more challenging. By reviewing market intelligence, market prices and derivatives databases, I find limited evidence that sterling weakness has yet produced any significant changes to UK firms’ ability to manage their FX debt obligations.
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Filed under Currency, Financial Stability, Macroeconomics
Stephen Burgess and Rachana Shanbhogue
Introduction
In 2016 the UK’s current account deficit was 5.9% of GDP, the widest since official records began in 1948. Many economists, including the IMF and FPC have suggested the UK is therefore vulnerable to foreign investors becoming less willing to invest in the country. In this post we challenge the idea that the UK is at the mercy of the “kindness of strangers”. Looking at gross, rather than net capital flows since 2012 suggests inflows have been extremely subdued relative to past levels. Instead, the UK has benefitted from increasing capital gains on past foreign investments and used these to fund its spending. We argue this carries lower financial stability risks than relying on gross inflows to cover the current account deficit.
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Filed under Financial Stability, International Economics, Macroeconomics
Robert Czech and Matt Roberts-Sklar
The market for corporate debt plays a crucial role in the global financial system by providing funding to the real economy. However, little is known about investment behaviour in the secondary corporate bond market. When bond yields rise, how do investors react? Do they buy more bonds, perhaps leading to an offsetting downward pressure on yields? Or do they sell bonds, potentially amplifying the yield rise? For the sterling corporate bond market we find that asset managers generally buy bonds after an increase in yields. But, based on their behaviour during the 2013 ‘taper tantrum’, we find that their behaviour flips in stressed market conditions: they sell bonds, perhaps exacerbating the sell-off.
Filed under Financial Markets, Financial Stability
Misa Tanaka and John Thanassoulis
In the 2007-8 global financial crisis, a number of banks were bailed out by taxpayers while their most senior employees were paid extraordinary bonuses up to that point (E.g. here, here and here). The resulting public outcry led to new regulations allowing clawback of bonuses earned on the back of decisions that subsequently damage their banks and the wider economy. But will these rules work? Our theoretical research shows that sophisticated banks can game clawback regulations by altering pay contracts so as to incentivise bankers to take risks that benefit shareholders but that are excessive for society. The entire pay package matters, and so, understanding how it shapes risk-taking incentives is as important as monitoring compliance with clawback rules.
Filed under Banking, Financial Stability, Macroprudential Regulation
Marco Bardoscia, Paolo Barucca, Adam Brinley Codd and John Hill
The failure of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008 sent shockwaves around the world. But the losses at Lehman Brothers were only the start of the problem. The price of their bonds halved, almost overnight. Other institutions that held Lehman’s debt faced huge losses, and markets feared that those losses could trigger further failures. The good news is that our latest research suggests that risks within the UK banking system from one such contagion channel, “solvency contagion”, have declined sharply since 2008. We have developed a new model which quantifies risk from this channel, and helps us understand why it has fallen. Regulators are using the model to monitor this particular source of risk as part of the Bank’s annual concurrent stress test exercise.
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Filed under Financial Stability, Macroprudential Regulation, New Methodologies
