22 November 2016

VoxEU: The current state and future challenges of financial regulation

This column argues that improved capital requirements, liquidity requirements, bank resolution and cross-border regulatory cooperation are welcome, but that unresolved problems remain.

Capital requirements

[...] The recent regulations (for example, Basel III and the subsequent CRD IV in Europe) have not only increased the quality and quantity of required capital, but also put a stronger focus on the macroprudential aspects of capital regulation. This includes higher capital requirements for systemically important banks, whose failure could have stronger negative repercussions for the rest of the system, and capital buffers that vary with the credit cycle.

This shift from micro- to macroprudential regulation responds to the ‘fallacy of composition’, that assumes we can make the system safe solely by making individual banks safe. We now understand that, in trying to make themselves safer, banks can behave in ways that collectively undermine the system. The new Basel accord, and the greater emphasis on bank capital both on the micro- and macro-level, is certainly a positive reform.

Liquidity regulation           

[...]Basel III and the corresponding CRD IV package in Europe introduces liquidity requirements in the form of a Liquidity Coverage Ratio and a Net Stable Funding Ratio. The former is a measure of an institution’s ability to withstand a severe liquidity freeze in the next 30 days, and the latter is a longer-term approach designed to reveal risks that arise from significant maturity mismatches between assets and liabilities. Unlike capital requirements, much less empirical research has assessed the effect of these new requirements (for one of few exceptions, see Bonner and Eijffinge, 2016).

Bank resolution and cross-border regulatory cooperation

[...] Post-crisis, many countries have therefore introduced or reformed their bank resolution frameworks. One important dimension has been the move from bail-out to bail-in. After the crisis, politicians pledged to ‘never’ force taxpayers to pay for bank losses again, and bail-in regimes have been introduced as an additional buffer to offset losses in worst-case scenarios. Total loss absorbing capacity (TLAC) for systemically important financial institutions and Minimum Requirement for Own Funds and Eligible Liabilities (MREL) for other banks in Europe are junior liabilities, to be bailed in before any government support can be provided.

The Eurozone has additionally introduced a banking union (though not a complete one) to break the adverse feedback loop between sovereigns and the financial system, and create more distance between banks and regulators, thus preventing forbearance.

Activity restrictions and regulatory perimeter

[...] Two reports set out proposals on activity restrictions in Europe. In the UK there is The Independent Commission on Banking: The Vickers Report (2013) and the Report of the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on Bank Structural Reform (2012), known as the ‘Liikanen Report’. Both aimed to make banking groups safer and less connected to trading activities to reduce the burden on taxpayers. While the Vickers approach suggested ring-fencing essential banking activities that may need government support in the event of a crisis, the Liikanen approach suggested that activities that would be bailed-in in a crisis, but not receive government support, should be isolated in a separate subsidiary. Ring-fencing is being implemented in the UK, but to date no structural reforms have been formally introduced in Europe.

The challenges

[...] One of the key lessons from the last crisis has been that the regulation of the financial system should take an integrative approach, and consider the potential fragility of banks alongside shadow banks. This would prevent regulatory arbitrage and regulate the system with a holistic view. Take, for example, money-market mutual funds, which invest in bonds, treasuries, and other such assets and have a liability structure that is like that of banks. While regulation did not treat money-market funds like banks, and so they were free to do many of the things banks could not do, this has now changed (Rosengren 2014). This has shifted attention to fixed income mutual funds, which invest in corporate, government, and other types of bonds and have recently grown rapidly in the US. They provide much of the liquidity transformation that has been traditionally provided solely by banks (Goldstein et al. 2015). Again this is likely to be a response to the tightened regulation of banks. Going forward, regulators should think more about incorporating such entities into the regulatory framework. [...]

Looking forward

What have we learned since the onset of the Global Crisis about how to cope with these challenges? We drew four general conclusions.

• As the financial system gets more and more complex and sophisticated, there is a tendency to make regulation also more complex too. This may backfire. First, increasing the complexity of the financial regulation may create stronger incentives for financial institutions to make themselves more complex (Haldane and Madouros 2012). Second, financial institutions and investors may see an opportunity to manipulate complex financial regulation rules (Mariathasan and Merrouche 2014 examine the case of risk weights). Hence we believe it is important to complement complex regulation with simple rules. For example, the return to a simple leverage ratio in the new Basel accord alongside risk-weighted capital requirements is a step in the right direction.
• The systemic risks mean there is the need for a stronger focus on macroprudential policies to complement traditional microprudential policies. New policy measures, such as bank stress tests and capital requirements that depend on the aggregate state of the economy, are steps in the right direction. A lot of work is still needed to measure systemic risk and assess the effectiveness of macroprudential policy measures.
• Recent crises show that it is critical to have frameworks in place to resolve financial intermediaries in a way that minimises disruption for the rest of the financial system and the real economy, while allocating losses according to creditor ranking. An incentive-compatible resolution framework has therefore not only important effects ex post (in the case of failure), but also important ex-ante incentive effects for risk-decision takers. A lot of attention and preparation is needed to prepare for the potential failure of big and complex institutions. Imposing living wills and requiring bail-in strategies would be important steps that will make institutions think more about the event of the failure and internalise the risks that they are imposing on the system. Resolution in the case of cross-border institutions remains a critical issue.
• We need to have a dynamic and forward looking approach to regulation. In the past regulatory reform addressed the regulatory gaps exposed in the most recent crises at that point. As regulators tightened restrictions on institutions that had problems in the past, activity and risk-taking shifted to other institutions and markets. the next wave of crises happened in places outside the regulatory perimeter at the time, and tended to catch regulators unprepared. It is thus important to think about the entire system, and understand the next wave of innovations as they happen. Regulating one type of institution will lead to the emergence of others, and so we need to understand how to design forward-looking regulation. This would imply that the regulatory perimeter must be adjusted over time, and that the focus of prudential regulation (both micro- and macro-prudential) might also need to  adjust as new sources of systemic risks arise.

Full article on VoxEU

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