How does deposit insurance affect bank risk? Evidence from the recent crisis

Deposit insurance is widely offered in a number of countries as part of a financial system safety net to promote stability. An unintended consequence of deposit insurance is the reduction in the incentive of depositors to monitor banks which lead to excessive risk-taking. We examine the relation between deposit insurance and bank risk and systemic fragility in the years leading up to and during the recent financial crisis. We find that generous financial safety nets increase bank risk and systemic fragility in the years leading up to the global financial crisis. However, during the crisis, bank risk is lower and systemic stability is greater in countries with deposit insurance coverage. Our findings suggest that the “moral hazard effect” of deposit insurance dominates in good times while the “stabilization effect” of deposit insurance dominates in turbulent times. The overall effect of deposit insurance over the full sample we study remains negative since the destabilizing effect during normal times is greater in magnitude compared to the stabilizing effect during global turbulence. In addition, we find that good bank supervision can alleviate the unintended consequences of deposit insurance on bank systemic risk during good times, suggesting that fostering the appropriate incentive framework is very important for ensuring systemic stability.     

Deposit insurance and international bank liabilities

This paper examines the responsiveness of external bank liabilities to deposit insurance policies for a sample of developed countries. External bank liabilities held by non-banks are found to increase after the introduction of explicit deposit insurance. Deposit insurance schemes tend to exclude interbank deposits from coverage and the response of external interbank liabilities to deposit insurance appears to be varied. Neither external non-bank nor external interbank liabilities are found to be materially affected by deposit insurance design. This suggests that international competition in the area of deposit insurance design – as possible under the EU deposit insurance directive of 1994 – would be fruitless.     

Private deposit insurance,deposit flows,bank lending,and moral hazard

We examine the role of private unlimited deposit insurance as a complement to federal deposit insurance for deposit flows, bank lending, and moral hazard during a crisis. We find that banks whose deposits are federally and privately fully insured obtain more deposits and expand lending, in contrast to banks whose deposits are only federally insured. We also document that privately insured banks remain prudent in the loan origination process during the subprime crisis. Our results offer novel insights into depositor and bank behavior in the presence of multiple deposit insurance schemes with differential design features. They also illustrate how private sector solutions incentivize prudent bank behavior to strengthen the financial safety net.     

Deposit insurance coverage,ownership, and banks' risk-taking in emerging markets

We ask how deposit insurance systems and ownership of banks affect the degree of market discipline on banks' risk-taking. Market discipline is determined by the extent of explicit deposit insurance, as well as by the credibility of non-insurance of groups of depositors and other creditors. Furthermore, market discipline depends on the ownership structure of banks and the responsiveness of bank managers to market incentives. An expected U-shaped relationship between explicit deposit insurance coverage and banks' risk-taking is influenced by country specific institutional factors, including bank ownership. We analyze specifically how government ownership, foreign ownership and shareholder rights affect the disciplinary effect of partial deposit insurance systems in a cross-section analysis of industrial and emerging market economies, as well as in emerging markets alone. The coverage that maximizes market discipline depends on country-specific characteristics of bank governance. This “risk-minimizing” deposit insurance coverage is compared to the actual coverage in a group of countries in emerging markets in Eastern Europe and Asia.     

Bank credit default swaps and deposit insurance around the world

We investigate the impact of deposit insurance schemes on banks' credit risk – a predictor of failure and a key element in the current financial crisis. Unlike most studies, which use balance sheet measurements of risk, we adopt a forward-looking and market-based measure of bank credit risk: the credit default swap (CDS) spread. We find that banks in countries with explicit deposit insurance systems have higher CDS spreads, supporting the “moral hazard” view. The results suggest that deposit insurance design features that lessen the adverse impact are risk-adjusted premium, coinsurance systems, government-established systems, “risk-minimizing” systems, and systems with dual-funding sources. Full coverage appears to stabilize bank risk only during the financial crisis period. More stringent bank regulation, such as capital adequacy regulation and independent supervision, could reduce the undesirable impact of deposit insurance. Deposit insurance seems to help stabilize volatile markets, as evidenced during the financial crisis and in countries with greater market volatility. In addition, we find that the adverse impact of deposit insurance on bank credit risk is more pronounced for banks with low asset quality and low liquidity.     

Depositors’ Response to Deposit Insurance Reforms: Evidence from Japan, 1990–2005

We empirically investigate depositors’ response to various bank risk measures under different deposit insurance regimes. We find that depositor discipline is most significant during periods of full insurance coverage rather than during limited insurance coverage, and that deposit withdrawal induces bank managers to carry out aggressive restructuring. Our evidence suggests that the magnitude of depositor discipline is affected by both the extent of insurance coverage, and by the degree of public confidence in the stability of the financial system and the extent of regulatory forbearance. There is little evidence that higher interest rates at riskier banks promote depositor discipline.     

The effect of industry consolidation and deposit insurance reform on the resiliency of the U.S. bank insurance fund

We examine the effects of structural change in the U.S. banking industry, as well as key regulatory changes, including recently enacted deposit insurance reform legislation, on the resiliency of the FDIC-administered bank insurance fund (BIF) by estimating and comparing the probability of BIF insolvency over time. We do this using a Markov-switching model that relies on historical patterns of BIF disbursements to define the probability of switching among three “states” of the banking industry's financial health. Monte Carlo simulations are then performed to project the financial condition of the BIF over a 50-year period. Our results indicate that the insolvency risk to the bank insurance fund has increased significantly due to industry consolidation, and is mainly due to the concentration of deposits in the 10 largest U.S. banking companies. We also find that recent deposit insurance reforms will cause only a marginal reduction in the risk of BIF insolvency. The increased risk associated with a more concentrated industry structure simply dominates the reform effect.     

Capital regulation,deposit insurance and bank risk: International evidence from normal and crisis periods

In this paper, we examine the impact of capital regulation on bank risk and the moderating role of deposit insurance on the relationship between capital regulation and bank risk during both normal and crisis periods. Using an international sample of banks from 111 countries, our results show that stringent capital regulation reduces bank default risk, in general, during normal growth period, and this effect is not conditioned by the existence of explicit deposit insurance. Further, stringent capital regulation in place during the pre-crisis period reduces bank default risk during the crisis period, and this effect is stronger for countries with explicit deposit insurance during the pre-crisis period. These results have important policy implications to design the optimal bank regulations.     

Market discipline and deposit insurance

Cross-country evidence presented in this paper suggests that explicit deposit insurance reduces required deposit interest rates, while at the same time it lowers market discipline on bank risk taking. Internationally, deposit insurance schemes vary widely in their coverage, funding, and management. This reflects that there are widely differing views on how deposit insurance should optimally be structured. To inform this debate, we use a newly constructed data set of deposit insurance design features to examine how different design features affect deposit interest rates and market discipline.     

Impact of regulatory interactions on bank capital structure

This article examines a bank's optimal capital structure and risk-taking decisions in a regulated environment. We focus on the interactive nature of the Fed's collateralized discount window lending and the FDIC's deposit insurance. Such regulatory interactions are shown to have nonlinear and nonuniform impacts on the bank's leverage and risk-taking decisions. Thus, bank moral hazard problems may persist, even when banks are charged risk-adjusted deposit insurance premia and are also subject to market discipline through subordinate debt. Our analysis yields several new policy implications about the design and pricing of bank regulations.     

How Does Information Disclosure Affect Bank Systemic Risk in the Presence of a Deposit Insurance System?

ABSTRACT

This article establishes a dynamic game with incomplete information to theoretically analyze the influence mechanism of information disclosure on systemic risk in the presence of a deposit insurance system. To verify the mechanism, we use panel data on 247 global banks in 41 countries during the period 2006 to 2015 in an empirical analysis. Our article finds that a high degree of information disclosure can reduce deposit insurance premiums and weaken the negative incentive from a bailout by regulatory authorities. Moreover, the effect of deposit insurance on financial stability is not apparent, but the synergistic effect of deposit insurance and information disclosure reduces bank systemic risk. Furthermore, different deposit insurance designs affect bank behavior, so it is crucial for bank supervisors to create proper deposit insurance systems, which are helpful in strengthening market discipline and preventing moral hazard thus contributing to a stable financial environment. Therefore, under the deposit insurance system, regulatory authorities should strive to improve the standard of information disclosure to ensure systemic stability.     

Chinese write-down bonds and bank capital structure

In this paper, we use a structural model to investigate a bank capital structure that contains deposits, straight bonds, Write-Down (WD) bonds and equity. We first explicitly give the default boundaries and the values of a deposit, straight bond, WD bond, equity and bank asset, and then use a numerical example to demonstrate the relations among leverage, deposits, WD bonds and bank value. Our results show that value-maximizing banks select the ratio of deposit, straight bond and WD debt so that endogenous default is consistent with exogenous bank closure. The bank increases its leverage by swapping both deposits and straight bonds for WD bonds. And the issuance of WD bonds not only reduces the expected bankruptcy loss and credit spread of straight bonds, but also improves the bank value. This indicates that WD bonds do help to stabilize banks. We also study the role of deposit insurance and the Chinese Financial Stability Bureau (FSB), and give a closed-form expression for the fair insurance premium. Lastly, to check the robustness of our results, we do the sensitivity analysis and investigate the effect of three sets of exogenous parameters on bank capital structure: WD parameters, bank business features, closure rules and insurance subsidy, and obtain some practically significant implications.     

Explicit deposit insurance design: International effects on bank lending during the global financial crisis✰

Studies find that during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, loan spreads rose and corporate lending tightened, especially for foreign borrowers (a flight-home effect). We find that banks in countries with explicit deposit insurance (DI) made smaller reductions in total lending and foreign lending, experienced smaller increases in loan spreads, and had quicker post-crisis recoveries. These effects are more pronounced for banks heavily relying on deposit funding. Evidence also reveals that more generous or credible DI design is associated with a stronger stabilization effect on bank lending during the crisis, confirmed by the difference-in-differences analysis based on expansion of DI coverage during the crisis. The stabilization effect is robust to the use of country-specific crisis measures and control of temporary government guarantees.     

The spread of deposit insurance and the global rise in bank asset risk since the 1970s

We construct a new measure of deposit insurance generosity for many countries, empirically model the exogenous international influences on the adoption and generosity of deposit insurance and use a novel econometric method to explore the causal chain from the expansion of deposit insurance generosity to increased overall lending, increased lending to households, increased banking system leverage, and more severe and frequent banking crises. Greater deposit insurance generosity robustly produces greater overall lending relative to bank assets and more lending to households relative to both bank assets and GDP, and results in higher banking system leverage. Our estimates, however, are not conclusive regarding whether greater deposit insurance generosity resulted in greater total loans relative to GDP or in more frequent or severe banking crises.     

Market discipline and deposit insurance reform in Japan

On April 1, 2002, the Japanese government lifted a blanket guarantee of all deposits and began limiting the coverage of time deposits. This paper uses this deposit insurance reform as a natural experiment to investigate the relationship between deposit insurance coverage and market discipline. I find that the reform raised the sensitivity of interest rates on deposits, and that of deposit quantity to default risk. In addition, the interest rate differentials between partially insured large time deposits and fully insured ordinary deposits increased for risky banks. These results suggest that the deposit insurance reform enhanced market discipline in Japan. I also find, however, that too-big-to-fail (TBTF) policy became a more important determinant of interest rates and deposit allocation after the reform, thereby partially offsetting the positive effects of the deposit insurance reform on overall market discipline.     

Depositors' Welfare,Deposit Insurance,and Deregulation

We develop an analytical model to address the question of optimal deposit insurance policy and to examine the impact of deregulation on depositors' welfare and the soundness of the insurance system. We find that the optimal level of regulation depends critically on the functional relationship between risk and return. We show that in general deregulation of bank activities and/or of deposit rate ceilings will in volve tradeoff between depositors' welfare and the soundness of the insurance system. Our analysis also indicates that risk-sensitive premium and capital requirement schedules may not be efficient in managing the risk of banks.     

Deposit insurance and bank risk-taking: Evidence from internal loan ratings

We analyze the effect of deposit insurance on the risk-taking behavior of banks in the context of a quasi-natural experiment using detailed credit registry data. Using the case of an emerging economy, Bolivia, which introduced a deposit insurance system during the sample period, we compare the risk-taking behavior of banks before and after the introduction of this system. We find that in the post-deposit insurance period, banks are more likely to initiate riskier loans (i.e., loans with worse internal ratings at origination). These loans carry higher interest rates and are associated with worse ex-post performance (i.e., they have higher default and delinquency rates). Banks do not seem to compensate for the extra risk by increasing collateral requirements or decreasing loan maturities. We also find evidence that the increase in risk-taking is due to the decrease in market discipline from large depositors. Finally, differences between large (too-big-to-fail) and small banks diminished in the post-deposit insurance period.     

Effects of securitization and covered bonds on bank stability

This paper empirically investigates the relationship of securitization and covered bonds with bank stability and highlights that this relationship varies with the level of a bank's involvement in a specific instrument. The study uses the data from 46 securitizing and covered bond issuing listed banks in Europe for 2000–2014. The initial results show that some banks have been heavily involved in securitization activity, while covered bond issuance does not go beyond a certain limit. The results obtained using a quadratic model and a generalized additive model show a U-shaped relationship between securitization and systemic risk of banks. However, some interesting results are obtained for covered bonds. Initial results do not show a significant impact of covered bonds on systemic risk, but further analysis shows the presence of a size effect. The systemic risk of smaller banks increases after the issuance of covered bonds, while larger banks remain unaffected. The study does not support imposing uniform limits on covered bond issuance; rather such limits should be linked to the bank size. However, some regulatory framework is needed to limit banks’ involvement in securitization.     

Realized bank risk during the great recession

We find that certain bank characteristics—aggressive credit growth, less reliance on deposit funding, and size—prior to the 2007−2009 crisis are consistently related to the systemic dimensions of bank risk during the crisis. Exposures to real estate play a major role explaining this relationship: Banks with larger real estate betas exhibited higher levels of systemic risk during the crisis. The impact of real estate betas on systemic risk increases for larger banks, following aggressive credit growth policies in the presence of housing bubbles. We show that the relationship between bank characteristics and risk could also be detected using measures of systemic risk calculated prior to the financial crisis.     

Modelling Deposit Insurance Scheme Losses in a Basel 2 Framework

This paper extends the existing literature on deposit insurance by proposing a new approach for the estimation of the loss distribution of a Deposit Insurance Scheme (DIS) that is based on the Basel 2 regulatory framework. In particular, we generate the distribution of banks’ losses following the Basel 2 theoretical approach and focus on the part of this distribution that is not covered by capital (tail risk). We also refine our approach by considering two major sources of systemic risks: the correlation between banks’ assets and interbank lending contagion. The application of our model to 2007 data for a sample of Italian banks shows that the target size of the Italian deposit insurance system covers up to 98.96% of its potential losses. Furthermore, it emerges that the introduction of bank contagion via the interbank lending market could lead to the collapse of the entire Italian banking system. Our analysis points out that the existing Italian deposit insurance system can be assessed as adequate only in normal times and not in bad market conditions with substantial contagion between banks. Overall, we argue that policy makers should explicitly consider the following when estimating DIS loss distributions: first, the regulatory framework within which banks operate such as (Basel 2) capital requirements; and, second, potential sources of systemic risk such as the correlation between banks’ assets and the risk of interbank contagion.