Assessing the effectiveness of financial reporting harmonization for emerging market banks: The case of Banco Serfin

In the last decade there has been a proliferation of financial crises in emerging markets. To some extent, the suddenness and magnitude of some of these crises have been blamed on poor financial reporting standards for bank loan losses. As a result, prior to providing countries with “financial bailout” funds, international investors and international financial organizations have increasingly required that countries harmonize their bank financial reporting standards with international financial reporting standards.Given this trend, this case requires students to assess the effectiveness of efforts to harmonize loan financial reporting (with International Financial Reporting Standards) for Mexican banks during (and after) the country’s financial crisis of the late 1990s. Students are required to assess the extent to which both pre-crisis standards as well as new, post-crisis standards complied with international financial reporting standards. They are also required to assess the impact of the new standards on the reporting practices for loans of one particularly troubled financial institution. Through the examination of this institution’s accounting practices for loans, students obtain a familiarity of the shortcomings of emerging markets’ banks’ loan financial reporting as well as the factors which influence the adoption of international financial reporting standards by emerging market banks.     

Advances in the Financial Reporting of Mexican Banks: An Evaluation of Post-Devaluation Reporting Practices

In 1994, Mexico underwent a severe peso devaluation. Thereafter, the country’s financial system experienced severe financial stress as loan defaults forced the government to undertake a program to rescue the country’s banks and obtain international financial assistance. One of the measures involved the reformulation of the financial reporting principles used by the country’s banks. The standards, which are contained in the Mexican National Banking and Securities Commission’s Circular 1343 (1997), were designed to provide Mexican banks with a comprehensive set of financial reporting standards and to bring the financial reporting practices of Mexican financial institutions closer to international standards. However, while the standards contain several improvements in the fundamental aspects of financial reporting for Mexican banks, they lack some important measurement and disclosure provisions contained in international standards. Given this tendency, this paper examines the post-devaluation (1998) financial reporting practices of Mexican banks. Emphasis is placed on comparing the reporting practices contained in the banks’ 1998 financial statements with the requirements of Circular 1343, the standards published by the Mexican Institute of Public Accountants (MIPA), International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) standards, and Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rules.     

Is there a relation between audit fee cuts during the global financial crisis and banks’ financial reporting quality?

As a result of the global financial crisis (GFC), several audit clients were able to negotiate lower audit fees for the years 2008 and 2009. However, the PCAOB has expressed concern that lower audit fees might lead to lower audit effort and lower audit quality and financial reporting quality. This study examines the relation between audit fee cuts and banks’ financial reporting quality. Specifically, we focus on earnings management via loan loss provisions (LLP), the relation between current period LLP and future loan charge-offs, i.e., LLP validity, and the timely recognition of loan losses. For banks audited by Big 4 auditors, we find that income-increasing abnormal LLP are decreasing in audit fee cuts and LLP validity is increasing in audit fee cuts. For banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors, LLP validity is higher for banks that received a fee cut of more than 25% relative to other banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors. We do not observe an association between timely loan loss recognition and cuts in audit fees except for banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors and exempt from internal control audits where a fee cut of more than 25% is associated with less timely loan loss recognition. Overall, the findings suggest that Big 4 auditors constrained earnings management via LLP in banks that received cuts in audit fees. Our findings have important implications for regulators, investors, and others.     

Toward a conceptual framework of the harmonization of bank financial reporting standards in transition economies: The case of Mexico

In recent years banks in emerging and transition economies throughout the world have been compelled to change lending and financial reporting practices in response to the economic transition of their countries. Correspondingly, on the basis of the theory of soft budget constraints (SBC), economists have studied the relationship between economic development, banks' lending practices, and banks' penchant to overstate loans. However, very little research has been performed by accounting researchers regarding the nature of bank loan overstatement during times of financial crisis in emerging markets. Accordingly, this paper uses the theory of soft budget constraints to develop a four stage conceptual framework of the harmonization of bank financial reporting standards during times of economic transition. Emphasis is placed on using the theory of soft budget constraints to characterize the harmonization of standards and practices with respect to bank loan overstatement. The framework is applied to the harmonization of Mexican bank financial reporting during the country's economic transition of the late 1990s. The Mexican harmonization process during this period generally followed the framework.     

A Methodology for Calculating the Allowance for Loan Losses in Commercial Banks

Severe disturbances in the financial markets in many countries during the 1980s and 1990s caused many stakeholders to examine whether commercial banks had adequate reserves for future loan losses. In the United States, bank regulators considered an adequate Allowance for Loan Losses a 'safety and soundness' issue while the SEC became increasingly concerned over the possibility of banks using the Allowance as a method to 'manage earnings'. Both regulators demanded more rigorous calculations from banks to support their accounting entries. Also the FASB and the IASB have expressed concerns about a lack of harmonization and convergence in standards. An analysis of measurement standards in the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and Australia, as well as by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the IASB, reveals the partially conflicting goals for the Allowance: (a) promote harmonization (IASB), (b) increase transparency (SEC), (c) promote safety and soundness (bank regulators) and (d) maintain reasonable flexibility in recognition of the subjective aspects in determining an appropriate Allowance (bankers). The article offers a methodology which an individual bank may utilize to reconcile the conflicting goals of all interested parties.     

The predictive ability of loan loss provisions in banks – Effects of accounting standards,enforcement and incentives

In this study we compare the predictive ability of loan loss provisions with respect to actual losses under IFRS and local GAAP. The ‘incurred loss model’ of IAS 39 is a model that requires a relatively low level of judgment by preparers compared to alternative models that exist under local GAAP. We find that loan loss provisions in IFRS bank years predict future credit losses to a lesser extent than in local GAAP bank years, consistent with the incurred loss model reducing the timeliness of provisions. We also examine the interaction of standards with enforcement of financial reporting and with preparer incentives. In testing the role of enforcement from, e.g., banking supervisory authorities, we find that the benefits of local GAAP are largely limited to high-enforcement settings. Local GAAP also performs relatively better than IFRS in large and in profitable banks. This has implications for the IASB and the FASB as they prescribe the adoption of the more judgment-based expected loss model in IFRS 9 and the corresponding US GAAP standard (ASC topic 326), as well as for supervisory authorities that will enforce these standards.     

关联企业制度与银行信贷风险的控制和监管

关联企业信贷风险控制在银行信贷管理中十分重要.频频发生的关联企业巨额贷款损失案件暴露出我国现行关联企业制度的缺陷以及我国商业银行关联企业信贷风险控制机制的漏洞.我国亟待借鉴国外经验,强化关联企业信贷风险控制.首先,国家要完善关联企业立法,从法律制度上保障银行债权;其次,商业银行应建立关联企业信贷风险控制机制以及关联企业信贷信息咨询系统,并做好对关联企业贷款的统一授信、贷前调查和财务分析,选择合适的借款主体和担保方式,在借款合同中设置预防性条款,加强贷后管理;最后,银行监管机构要采取措施加强对关联企业信贷风险的监管.     

Enhancing Loan Quality Through Transparency: Evidence from the European Central Bank Loan Level Reporting Initiative

We explore whether transparency in banks’ securitization activities enhances loan quality. We take advantage of a novel disclosure initiative introduced by the European Central Bank, which requires, as of January 2013, banks that use their asset‐backed securities as collateral for repo financing to report securitized loan characteristics and performance in a standardized format. We find that securitized loans originated under the transparency regime are of better quality with a lower default probability, a lower delinquent amount, fewer days in delinquency, and lower losses upon default. Additionally, banks with more intensive loan level information collection and those operating under stronger market discipline experience greater improvement in their loan quality under the new reporting standards. Overall, we demonstrate that greater transparency has real effects by incentivizing banks to improve their credit practices.     

Prudential Application of IFRS 9: (Un)Fair Reporting in COVID‐19 Crisis for Banks Worldwide?!

IFRS 9 and ASC 326 were developed after the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and both accounting standards include an expected loss model as a means of providing for credit losses. As a result of the COVID‐19 worldwide pandemic, however, banks face considerable uncertainty about the potential scale of the bad debts for which they will need to provide. Banks need to reassess their loan assets, by updating their risk models with expectations about potential default rates and future macro‐economic and financial developments. However, we see several interventions worldwide. The European Securities and Markets Authority addresses a position paper on the prudential application of IFRS 9. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act in the US has given banks an optional deferral of implementation of the CECL model until 31 December 2020. This paper addresses the challenges banks face when applying the expected losses model during the current crisis. More importantly, it discusses the impact of supervisor and regulators’ intervention on future financial reporting comparability, transparency and whether there is a level playing field.     

Countercyclical prudential buffers and bank risk-taking

We investigate the effects of countercyclical prudential buffers on bank risk-taking. We exploit the introduction of dynamic loan loss provisioning in Spain, mandating that banks use historical average loss rates in their estimation of loan loss provisions. We find that dynamic loan loss provisioning is associated with reductions in timely loan loss provisioning. Banks that previously recognized loan losses in a timely fashion exhibit the greatest reductions in timeliness and consequently extend loans to riskier borrowers with lower accounting quality. Our results have policy implications for the debate on the use of financial reporting requirements in mitigating capital pro-cyclicality.     

Effects of international institutional factors on earnings quality of banks

We examine the relation between legal, extra-legal and political institutional factors and earnings quality of banks across countries. We predict that earnings quality is higher in countries with legal, extra-legal and political systems that reduce the consumption of private control benefits by insiders and afford outside investors greater protection. Using a sample of banks from 35 countries during the pre-crisis period from 1993 to 2006, we find that all five measures of earnings quality studied are higher in countries with stronger legal, extra-legal and political institutional structures. We also find that banks in countries with stronger institutions are less likely to report losses, have lower loan loss provisions, and higher balance sheet strength during the 2007–2009 crisis period. Our findings highlight the implications of country level institutional factors for financial reporting quality and are relevant to bank regulators who are considering additional regulations on bank financial reporting.     

存贷相联与银行的本质——基于KRS模型的扩展

作为集吸收公众存款和发放贷款于一身的金融中介,银行在整个金融体系中始终处于关键地位.既有文献对银行特质性问题进行了深入探讨,本文在KRS模型的基础上,进一步从理论上研究了活期存款、贷款承诺和定期贷款这三者之间的协同效应,认为金融功能的一体化是银行的本质所在,并结合20世纪90年代以来美国银行业转型的事实进行了初步实证考察,由此提出银行制度边界的命题.     

The integration of bank syndicated loan and junk bond markets

This paper hypothesizes that the special role of banks as corporate quasi-insiders has been changing due to developments in informational, legal and institutional infrastructures of syndicated loan markets. We investigate the integration of intermediated and disintermediated financial markets through highly leveraged transaction (HLT) syndicated loans during the 1990s. We demonstrate that, with the emergence of traded HLT syndicated loans as an alternative high-yield asset to high-yield bonds, market integration has dramatically increased. Taking the late 1980s and 1990s together, different factors explain the movement of credit spreads of the two markets. HLT loan market’s spreads are strongly affected by bank liquidity. Bank liquidity’s effect on HLT loan spreads disappears after 1993. From 1994–1999, junk bond market liquidity factors affect bank loan pricing. We interpret these changes as evidence of the erosion of bank specialness.     

Loan growth and bank risk: new evidence

This study provides new evidence on the relationship between abnormal loan growth and banks’ risk-taking behavior using data from a rich panel of Colombian financial institutions. We show that abnormal credit growth during a prolonged period leads to an increase in banks’ riskiness, accompanied by a reduction in solvency and an increase in the ratio of nonperforming loans to total loans. We also show that abnormal credit growth played a fundamental role in the bank-failure process during the late 1990s financial crisis in Colombia. Our results have important implications for financial regulation and macro-prudential policy.     

Income smoothing among European systemic and non-systemic banks

There is scant research on the financial reporting behaviour of global systemically-important banks (G-SIBs) and non-global systemically-important banks (non-G-SIBs). We examine the link between financial reporting and financial system stability given the understanding that income smoothing is a stability mechanism for banks. We empirically examine whether the way G-SIBs use loan loss provisions (LLPs) to smooth income differ compared to non-G-SIBs and the incentive to do so. We examine 231 European banks and find that income smoothing is pronounced among G-SIBs in the post-crisis period and pronounced among non-G-SIBs in the pre-crisis period. Also, G-SIBs exhibit greater income smoothing when they: (i) have substantial non-performing loans, (ii) are more profitable and meet/exceed minimum regulatory capital ratios (iii) engage in forward-looking loan-loss provisioning and during recessionary periods. The implication of our findings is that capital regulation and abnormal economic fluctuations create incentives for systemic banks to use accounting numbers (loan loss provisions) to smooth income, which also align with the financial system stability objective of bank regulators. Our findings are useful to accounting standard setters in their evaluation of the role of reported accounting numbers for financial system stability, given the current regulatory environment in Europe which focuses on systemic banks.     

Do Loan Loss Provisions Affect the Credit Fluctuations in China’s Banking System?

ABSTRACT

The global financial crisis of 2008 sparked new ideas on pro-cyclical transmission in the financial system. The accounting treatment method of loan loss provisions differs between the accounting standards that banks use and the supervisory rules of banks. This fundamental difference has attracted wide attention from academics and regulators. This article studies whether bank loan loss provisions affect credit fluctuation in China’s banking system. We divide loan loss provisions into discretionary and non-discretionary loan loss provisions. We find that non-discretionary loan loss provisions result in greater credit fluctuation, whereas discretionary loan loss provisions have no significant impact on credit fluctuation. Further evidence shows that the relation between non-discretionary loan loss provisions and credit fluctuations does not vary among different types of banks. Overall, our study shows that non-discretionary loan loss provisions can increase credit fluctuation and therefore strengthen banks’ pro-cyclical behavior.     

CFO gender and financial reporting transparency in banks

We investigate the effect of CFO gender on the timeliness of loan loss provision (LLP) reporting using a large sample of US banks from 2007 to 2016. Our findings show that women CFOs are associated with timelier forward-looking provisioning than men counterparts, suggesting that they follow a more transparent approach to financial reporting policies. Our results hold under different model specifications, including the use of bank and CEO fixed effects. We further address endogeneity concerns by showing that the timeliness of LLP reporting improves significantly for banks experiencing a man-followed-by-woman CFO transition. Overall, our study supports the notion that women CFOs are associated with higher financial reporting transparency and provides further insights into how CFO gender affects risk-aversion and ethics in banks, with wider implications about the importance of women’s representation in the finance-based industry.     

The real consequences of bank mortgage lending standards

We examine the real effects of changes in bank mortgage loan underwriting standards by combining responses to the Federal Reserve’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, application information from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and local housing market measures over 1990 to 2013. Tightened standards are associated with a 1 percentage point increase in denial rates and a 5% fall in loan issuance, controlling for applicant pool changes, but no change for predominantly-securitizing banks. In areas with more exposure to banks that have tightened standards, mortgage delinquency rates, house prices, new home sales, and residential construction employment fall substantially.     

Loss Given Default,Loan Seasoning and Financial Fragility: Evidence from Commercial Real Estate Loans at Failed Banks

Commercial real estate (CRE) loan losses are a recurring contributor to bank failures and financial instability, yet they are not well understood. We examine a unique and proprietary data set of CRE loan defaults at banks that failed and were resolved by the FDIC after the 2008 financial crisis. We build upon an existing literature relating stochastic collateral values to loss given default (LGD). Consistent with model predictions, we show that CRE loans defaulting sooner after origination are more sensitive to declining economic conditions and exhibit LGDs that are more severe. These results are robust to a number of factors, including the declining balance of the loan over time. Our findings point to an inherent fragility associated with high CRE loan growth, even without necessarily a deterioration in lending standards, due to the changing composition of CRE loan seasoning in the industry. This reflects an unexplored risk in the literature concerning rapid and cyclical expansions in CRE credit.

     

Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans

Using a data set that records banks’ ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find that banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to borrower credit risk, relationship length, collateral, and the provision of business tax returns, but in complex ways. The relation between borrower risk and financial statement requests has an inverted U‐shape; and tax returns can be both substitutes and complements to financial statements, conditional on borrower characteristics and the degree of bank–borrower information asymmetry. Frequent financial reporting is used to monitor collateral, but only for non–real estate loans and only when the collateral is easily accessible to lenders. Collectively, our results provide novel evidence of a fundamental information demand for financial reporting in monitoring small commercial borrowers and a specific channel through which banks fulfill their role as delegated monitors.