Andrew Hewitt.

Deposit insurance schemes guard against bank runs by reducing or removing individual depositors’ incentives to withdraw their funds if they believe their bank to be in trouble. They help protect depositors but they risk also protecting risky bank business models by removing depositors’ incentives to avoid riskier banks. What can be done about this? In the past the answer was sometimes to make small depositors bear part of the risk through “co-insurance”. This was proven not to be credible. In this blog I consider some of the options available, including the risk-based levies currently being introduced in the EU and elsewhere, and increased transparency, drawing on recent literature on the saliency of tax in consumer choices.

Continue reading “Should the true costs of insuring deposits of up to £75,000 be made clearer?” →