Do large and small banks need different prudential rules?

Austen Saunders and Matthew Willison

Banks come in different shapes and sizes. Do prudential regulations that work well for big banks work as well for small ones? To help us find out, we measure the effectiveness of some key regulatory ratios as predictors of bank failure. We do so using ‘receiver operating characteristic’ – or ‘ROC’ – analysis of simple threshold rules. When we do this, we find that we can use the ratios we test to make better predictions for large banks than for small ones. This provides evidence that an efficient set of regulations for large banks might not be as efficient for small ones.

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Montagu Norman and the transformation of the Bank

Chris Swinson

This post contributes to our occasional series of guest posts by external researchers who have used the Bank of England’s archives for their work on subjects outside traditional central banking topics.

In 1944, the Bank of England’s historian, John Clapham, looked back at the ways in which the Bank had changed since 1914 and remarked:

‘ . . . it would not be fantastic to argue that the Bank in 1944 was further . . . from 1914 than 1914 was from 1714.’

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The leverage ratio: a balance between risk and safety

Jonathan Smith

What was the root cause of the financial crisis? Ask any economist or banker and undoubtedly they will at some point mention leverage (see e.g. here, here and here). Yet when a capital requirement based on leverage — the leverage ratio requirement — was introduced, fierce criticism followed (see e.g. here and here). Drawing on the insights from a working paper, and thinking about the main criticism — that a leverage ratio requirement could cause excessive risk-taking — this seems not to have been the case.

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New banking regulation: is it affecting the clearing of derivatives?

Jonathan Smith and Gerardo Ferrara

Just like the beginning of an unforeseen family argument, two key tenets of the post-crisis reforms have unexpectedly started to butt heads: the leverage ratio capital requirement and the mandatory requirement to centrally clear certain over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives.

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Gender diversity on Bank Board of Directors and performance

Ann Owen and Judit Temesvary

Earlier this year the Bank hosted a joint conference with the ECB and the Federal Reserve Board on Gender and Career Progression. In this guest post one of the speakers, Ann Owen, discusses her work with Judit Temesvary on how the composition of boards affects decision making and ultimately performance in the banking sector.

The representation of women on boards of US bank holding companies has increased (chart 1), but nevertheless remains well below the share of women in the overall employee base (chart 2). While this also raises questions of equity, our research asks if a lack of gender diversity on bank boards has an economic impact on their performance. We find that it does, and that this effect depends on 1) the existing level of gender diversity on the board, and 2) the level of bank capitalization. If risk-weighted capital ratios are a proxy for the quality of bank management, our findings suggest that at well-managed banks, gender diversity has a positive impact on bank performance- but only once a threshold level of diversity is reached.

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Should peer to peer lenders exist in theory?

John Lewis

Walter Heller famously said that an economist is someone who sees something in practice and wonders if it would work in theory. Economic theory says banks exist because they channel loanable funds more efficiently than individual savers and investors pairing up bilaterally. Those informational, diversification and maturity transformation considerations imply that banks should be able to out-compete peer to peer (P2P) lenders. The stylised fact that few P2P platforms have made a profit to date is in line with this theory. If so, then P2P lenders face a difficult future and they may need to become more like traditional banks in order to survive. Either way, that makes them much less disruptive than they first appear.

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Bitesize: The rise and fall of interest only mortgages

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.

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Bitesize: Common ownership across UK banks: implications for competition and financial stability

Paolo Siciliani and Daniel Norris

Asset managers make it more convenient for savers to diversify their investments in stock markets. They are also in a better position to monitor the managers of firms in their portfolios, even if they adopted a passive investment strategy. However, it has been argued that competition might be weakened when firms competing in concentrated industries, such as airlines, share the same small number of institutional investors as their top shareholders.

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Has there been a sea change in the way banks respond to capital requirements?

Sebastian J A de-Ramon, William Francis and Qun Harris

Shakespeare first coined the term ‘sea change’ in The Tempest to describe King Alonso’s lasting transformation after his mystical death by drowning. Resting five fathoms deep, Alonso suffers a sea change into something rich and strange, with coral for bones and pearls for eyes. In a recent working paper, we explore for evidence of a possible sea change in UK banks’ balance sheets using data spanning the 2007-09 crisis. Our initial dive into the still murky, post-crisis waters shows signs of something strange and unrecognizable, with UK banks, in response to higher capital requirements, increasing the level and in particular the quality of capital more after the crisis. This post describes our dive and its findings.

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Central bank digital currency: the end of monetary policy as we know it?

Marilyne Tolle.

Central banks (CBs) have long issued paper currency. The development of Bitcoin and other private digital currencies has provided them with the technological means to issue their own digital currency. But should they?

Addressing this question is part of the Bank’s Research Agenda. In this post I sketch out how a CB digital currency – call it CBcoin – might affect the monetary and banking systems – setting aside other important and complex systemic implications that range from prudential regulation and financial stability to technology, operational and financial conduct.

I argue that taken to its most extreme conclusion, CBcoin issuance could have far-reaching consequences for commercial and central banking – divorcing payments from private bank deposits and even putting an end to banks’ ability to create money. By redefining the architecture of payment systems, CBcoin could thus challenge fractional reserve banking and reshape the conduct of monetary policy.

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