Bank of England: Financial Stability Report, June 2017

27 June 2017

The Financial Stability Report set out the FPC’s assessment of the outlook for financial stability in the United Kingdom. To do this, the FPC identifies the risks faced by the UK financial system and weighs them against the resilience of the system.

The Financial Policy Committee (FPC) aims to ensure the UK financial system is resilient to the wide range of risks it faces. 

The FPC assesses the overall risks from the domestic environment to be at a standard level:  most financial stability indicators are neither particularly elevated nor subdued. 

As is often the case in a standard environment, there are pockets of risk that warrant vigilance.  Consumer credit has increased rapidly. Lending conditions in the mortgage market are becoming easier.  Lenders may be placing undue weight on the recent performance of loans in benign conditions.

Exit negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union have begun.  There are a range of possible outcomes for, and paths to, the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU.

Some possible global risks have not crystallised, though financial vulnerabilities in China remain pronounced. Measures of market volatility and the valuation of some assets — such as corporate bonds and UK commercial real estate — do not appear to reflect fully the downside risks that are implied by very low long-term interest rates.

To ensure that the financial system has the resilience it needs, the FPC is:

• Increasing the UK countercyclical capital buffer rate to 0.5%, from 0%.  Absent a material change in the outlook, and consistent with its stated policy for a standard risk environment and of moving gradually, the FPC expects to increase the rate to 1% at its November meeting.   
• Bringing forward the assessment of stressed losses on consumer credit lendingin the Bank’s 2017 annual stress test.  This will inform the FPC’s assessment at its next meeting of any additional resilience required in aggregate against this lending.  The FPC further supports the intentions of the Prudential Regulation Authority and Financial Conduct Authority to publish, in July, their expectations of lenders in the consumer credit market.
• Clarifying its existing insurance measures in the mortgage market, designed to prevent excessive growth in the number of highly indebted households.  This will promote consistency across lenders in their application of tests to assess whether new mortgage borrowers can afford repayments.
• Consistent with its previous commitment, restoring the level of resilience delivered by its leverage ratio standard to the level it delivered in July 2016 before the FPC excluded central bank reserves from the leverage ratio exposure measure.  The FPC intends to set the minimum leverage requirement at 3.25% of non-reserve exposures, subject to consultation. 
• Overseeing contingency planning to mitigate risks to financial stability as the United Kingdom withdraws from the European Union.
• Building on the programme of cyber resilience testing it instigated in 2013, by setting out the essential elements of the regulatory framework for maintaining cyber resilience.  It will now monitor that each element is being fulfilled by the relevant UK authorities.

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