Banking

Banking makes a major contribution to mature economies but banking crises can do them great damage. Bank regulation is a compromise between the avoidance of banking crises and the preservation of banking efficiency. Following the crash of 2008, proposals for regulatory reform are under consideration, and there are prospects of major changes to the structure of the world's banking industry.


 * (For definitions of the terms used in this article, see the glossary on the Related Articles subpage).

Banking essentials
Banks are financial intermediaries between lenders and borrowers.

"Commercial banks" accept payments from depositors and lend money to personal and commercial borrowers. In addition to the money they get from depositors, they can borrow money in a variety of ways, including short-term loans from their central bank's "'discount window", or from the money market. They make profits by charging higher interest rates to their borrowers than they pay to their lenders  - a difference that is known as  their "spread".

The banks that lend money to borrowers but do not accept deposits from the public,  include  "wholesale banks" that deal with other banks or financial companies; "investment banks", (also known as "merchant banks") that raise money for companies  by finding buyers for their equity and  bonds; and "universal banks" that combine all of those activities. Other institutions that lend money to personal or commercial borrowers are referred to collectively as the "shadow banking system".

The practice of retaining only a fraction of the money deposited with it as a "reserve" and lending out the rest is known as "fractional reserve banking", and it enables the bank to participate in the process of increasing the amount of money in circulation, that is known as the "money supply".

Bank runs (the Diamond-Dybvig model)
Banks usually make loans that they cannot withdraw at short notice, and pay for them with deposits that can be withdrawn without notice. This is referred to as a situation in which a bank's liabilities are more liquid than its assets. A bank is said to suffer a "liquidity crisis" if too many depositors attempt to withdraw their money at one time - a situation referred to as a bank run. The Diamond-Dybvig model  explains why banks choose to issue deposits that are more liquid than their assets and  why banks are subject to runs. It is a highly stylised three-period, one-bank construction that makes use of the game theory concept of a Nash equilibrium to derive its conclusions. . The model has been widely used as theoretical framework for analysing the economics of banking and banking  policy

Bank lending (incomplete contract theory)
When it is not feasible to provide in a contract for all of  the circumstances that may govern its fulfilment, the contract is said to be incomplete. There is often a tacit understanding that the terms of an incomplete contract may be renegotiated if there any unexpected developments. The concept of an incomplete contract is applicable to a bank loan because it is always possible that  circumstances will arise under which the recipient may be unable to comply with its terms. Under those circumstances, renegotiation may be better  than bankrutcy, both for the bank and for the borrower. It can be argued that it is the incomplete contract concept that has thus distinguished bank loans from other forms of borrowing. There is no established mechanism, for example, for the renegotiation of the terms of a bond.

Incomplete contract theory is about the economic advantages that can arise from the flexibility provided for in an incomplete contract. The theory has also been used to explain the historical development of banking practice and to make suggestions concerning its future development .

The agency problem
A problem can arise when an agent, who is employed to look after the interests of a principal, uses for his own benefit the authority given to him for that purpose. The agency problem is the problem of deciding how much it is worth spending on precautions or incentives to discourage such behaviour. Principal-agent relations are a necessary feature of financial intermediaries and conflicts of interest are inevitable. Market forces may be expected to deter agent misbehaviour when  the principals are as well-informed as their agents, but communication difficulties  give at least temporary protection to misbehaving  agents in the  complex context of modern banking. A wide range of potential agency problems has been identified , and there have been extensive studies of the influence of pay incentives such as performance-related bonuses. However, the perception that performance-related bonuses could encourage investment managers to take unwarranted risks was not voiced until 2008.

Portfolio theory
Applications of financial portfolio theory as a means of risk limitation  had an important influence on banks' investment policies. It led to the development of the concept of value at risk which had its origins in the 1922 membership requirements of the New York Stock Exchange and has since  been developed over the years by the incorporation of successive developments in financial economics. Its common feature is the assumption that investment risks are stochastic rather than deterministic - that is to say, the assumption that they arise from the existence or random fluctuations, and not as a consequence of human behaviour.

The creation of money
With the development in the 20th century of "fiat money" - whose value derives solely from the authority of government - the banking system has come to play an essential part in influencing the money supply. It can be shown that a  bank that lends out all but a fraction of its deposits can actually create money, so that, for example, a bank with a ten per cent reserve ratio  can convert a £1000  deposit into an increase in  the availability of money of up to £10,000. The extent to which banks do so in practice depends upon the exent to which money that is borrowed from a bank is returned to the  banking system as a  deposit. It depends also upon the banks' reserve ratios. In times of strong economic growth, the banks tend to increase their lending with the result that there is an increase in the money supply, facilitating yet more investment and consumption. Conversely, there is a tendency to reduce their lending (or "deleverage") in times of recession, causing a reduction in the availability of money (a "credit crunch") that tends to worsen the recession.

Monetary policy
The task of managing its currency is usually delegated by a country's  government to its central bank and with it,  the responsibility for maintaining monetary stability. The adoption of monetarist theory in the 1980s led to attempts to control inflation by controlling the money supply. One way of controlling the amount of money in circulation is by varying the interest rate that it charges the banks. A rate reduction  encourages banks to borrow money so that they can increase  lending and so create more money. Another way of increasing the money supply is by an open market operation in which the central bank buys securities from the private sector, paying for them by a nominal increase in its balance sheet liabilities (quantitative easing, sometimes referred to as  "printing money"). Alternatively, the money supply can be increased more directly by reducing the minimum reserve ratios that the banks are legally required to maintain. It is also open to a central bank to "sterilise" the monetary system against other influences upon the money supply by increasing or reducing its holdings of government securities. However, the degree of control that can be achieved by any of those methods is limited by the fluctuations that occur in the demand for money. Since the 1990s the general practice has been to use the central bank's influence on interest rates either to limit inflation at times of rapid economic expansion or to stimulate growth in order to avert a recession, and qualitative easing has only been used during major recessions (it was used in Japan in the 1990s and in the United States and Europe in 2009).

Banking innovations and failures - a brief history

 * for links to reports of the principle developments see the timelines subpage

Medieval banking
A variety of enterprises whose activities can be broadly described as banking were in existence before and during the middle ages. Some, that have been categorised as "deposit banks", accepted deposits and made loans; some, termed "exchange banks" were restricted to providing the means of making transactions between traders using different currencies; and others combined both functions. Deposit banking is believed by historians to have  evolved from  money changing. Coins were displacing barter as a means of trading but since they were of variable quality, it is thought to have been convenient to use the services of a money-changer. A trader could open an account with a money-changer into which he could deposit and withdraw coinage. Payments to other traders with accounts with the same trader could then be made by having the money-changer debit his account and credit theirs. The money-changer had to keep some coins in reserve for withdrawals and  payments to other money-changers but since, with random inflows and outflows, a net outflow amounting to a major proportion of the money deposited  was unlikely, the otherwise idle cash was made available for  loans. Those loans usually took the form of overdrafts to depositors because they were considered less risky than loans to strangers. The main causes of bank failures were fraud, and defaults on loans made to kings to pay their armies.

Renaissance banking
Few European banks achieved a reputation for probity and stability before the 17th century,  mainly because of the absence of established property rights or of the effective discouragement of fraud. There were a few local attempts to create stable and reliable banks. For example, the municipal authorities in Barcelona set up a public bank in the late fourteenth century, which accepted deposits but was not authorised to make loans to the public, but elsewhere banking  fraud and financial failure were commonplace. The best-known among the few exception was the Medici bank, which flourished in Florence in the first half of the fifteenth century, surviving long enough to develop some significant innovations. In particular, it brought about the general commercial use   of  "bills, of exchange" (which are the banking  counterpart of  promissary notes or IOUs), which enabled traders to defer payment for a purchase. Its practices are thought to have served as the model for modern European banking.

Banking developments in the 17th and 18th centuries
In the early years of the 17th century, the municipal authorities of Amsterdam, being aware that commercial activity there was being hampered by the uncertainties created by the circulaton of coins of various currencies and differing quality, decided to take action. As a corrective they founded the "Wisselbank" in 1609, , and required it to maintain a high level of stability by maintaining its reserves of coins and precious metals at a level close to 100 per centof its deposits. It operated mainly as a service to merchants who were trading in different currencies and it did not make loans to the public. Its main contribution to banking innovation was a system of transfers by cheques and direct debits that was similar to the system in use in the 21st century. The Wisselbank had some of the characterestics of a modern central bank  and it  inaugurated a five-hundred-year period of participation in, and regulation of banks by public authorities. However, the claim to have been the world's first central bank is made by the Swedish Riksbank which was inaugurated 1668 as the successor to John Palmstruch's  "Stockholm  Banco". It was nominally a private bank, but the King of Sweden appointed its management, and regulated its operations. Unlike the Wisselbank, it issued loans and maintained reserves at only a fraction of its deposits. Its main contribution to banking innovation was the issue the first modern banknotes, which were interest-free bills of exchange, denominated in specific amounts and - in principal - corresponding  in total value  to money deposited in the bank. It was later to be formally recognised as a public bank with a statutory monopoly of the issue of banknotes. The Bank of England was created as a private bank in 1694, mainly in order to raise money for the government of the day (by converting some of its debt to shares in the bank and in 1709 it was granted a partial monopoly in the issue of banknotes. . . The bank maintained sufficient reserves of gold to redeem its notes on demand (except during the Napoleonic War, when that facility had to be suspended). An attempt was made to set up a French central bank in 1710, but after a successful start, it collapsed in 1720, causing a major economic crisis. . United States banking commenced  in  the 1780s with the chartering of the Bank of North America, and the creation of the First Bank of the United States with a limited role as a central bank..

Expansion and instability in the 19th century
The nineteenth century saw the establishment of England as the principal centre of banking activity, and a rapid expansion of banking activities in the United States. In the United States the 1864 National Bank Act encouraged the creation of privately-owned banks and capital requirements were low by European standards. There began a rapid expansion of an effectively unregulated banking and a long period of intermittent financial instability. A large number of small banks sprang up at the state level, but few of them survived for more than five years and there were also  major failures at the national level. In England, the Gurney-Overend bank collapsed in 1866, causing a panic in which large numbers of people tried to withdraw deposits from their banks; leading to the collapse of over 200 companies. In 1890 the Barings bank, then the world's largest investment bank, failed and a rescue was organised by the Bank of England signalling for the first time acceptance of some responsibility for the stability of the banking system, and a recognition of the fact that some banks had become too big to fail.

The 20th century
Following the American stock exchange crash of 1929, there was a substantial reduction in the profitability of the banks and in 1930 a series of bank failures in the South and the Midwest led to attempts by depositors to convert their deposits into cash. The failure of the "Bank of the United States" created a general mistrust of the banks, and more severe banking crises followed in 1931 and 1932, and by  1933, nearly half of the banks that had existed in 1929 had gone out of business, and most of the rest had suffered heavy losses. The loss of nearly half of the banking system and the depleted reserves of the remainder led to what is now called a "credit crunch", and the financial system was further disrupted by widespread defaults among mortgage holders and by insolvencies among small firms.

The banking deregulations of the 1980s made possible a series of innovations, the  most significant of which was the practice of  securitisation, meaning the conversion of their loans into graded packages of bonds; and  the development of the strategy  known as "originate and distribute", under which  such bonds were sold  to pension funds, insurance companies and other banks. .

The benefits of banking
There is a presumption that - by providing an improved conduit between savers and investors - banking makes a significant  contribution to the functioning of an economy. The improvement that it provides is generally  attributed to the  banks' screening of applicants for investment funds, to their mobilisation of savings, to their monitoring of investment projects, and to their allocation of risks in response to the needs of different categories of investors. Despite measurement difficulties, the consensus view among economist is that belief in the economic benefits of banking is well supported by empirical  evidence - even to the extent of suggesting that a well-functioning banking sector may  be a necessary precondition for economic growth. Studies of the Dutch Republic, England, the U.S., France, Germany and Japan suggest that the establishment of a financial system has always preceded the onset of economic growth, and a correlation between financial developments and economic growth over the period 1850-1997 has been established by a cross-section study of 17 countries. It has also been shown that countries with more sophisticated financial systems tend to  engage in more trade, and appear to be better integrated  with other  economies. . Other empirical investigations have shown that the ratio of banking liabilities to GDP is strongly correlated with economic growth .

Inherent risks
Like any other enterprise, a bank can increase its profitability - but also its risk of insolvency -  by increasing its leverage  (as explained on the tutorials subpage). A bank creates leverage when it lends more money than it holds as reserves  (the money provided by its shareholders plus retained profits). With leverage ratios commonly as high as 20, losses of over 5 per cent can be sufficient to create insolvency. For a bank, the principal risks of loss are  credit risk, which is the risk that the value of a bank's loans will fall as a result of defaults on the part of borrowers, and interest rate risk, which is the risk that the value of a fixed-rate loan will fall as a result of a rise in interest rates.

In common with other enterprises that make profits by financing long-term investments by short-term borrowing, banks are also vulnerable to liquidity risks. Deposits in banks that can be withdrawn on demand  are,  in principle, the same as  short-term borrowings, although in normal circumstances it is unlikely that any  substantial proportion of them would be withdrawn simultaneously. Should that happen, however, the bank may find itself unable to raise the money needed to pay its depositors. A run on a bank can happen if depositors lose confidence in its ability to repay all deposits in full, and try to withdraw their funds immediately. Liquidity crises and bank runs are not the same as insolvency, but they can drive a bank into insolvency as a result of losses on the resulting forced-sales of its assets . A loss of confidence in one bank can spread to other banks by a process termed contagion. It may affect only those banks that are considered  to face similar problems, but it  may become a panic and affect banks that would otherwise be considered trouble- free - and, under extreme circumstances, it  can lead  infect non-banking organisations and lead to a systemic failure of a country's financial system, or even of the world's  entire financial system.

The effects of recent innovations
The banking innovations that were introduced in the 1980s  allowed risks to be shared more widely, enabling investments to be undertaken that woould not otherwise have been possible, and thus contributing to economic growth. It was not recognised at the time that they also increased the risk of systemic failure, but there were some expressions of concern in the early years of the 21st century. One cause for concern was a growing tendency to finance lending by short-term borrowing on the money market. In normal times, money market loans were automatically renewed (rolled over) as soon as they matured, but any hint of trouble could prompt the withawal of that facility. Another was the realisation that the process of securitisation had transferred decision-making from managers on fixed salaries to investment managers who were being awarded profit-related bonuses that had the effect of rewarding risk-taking, and a suspicion that the market was being further distorted by herding behaviour by managers who feared being outperformed by their rivals . It also seemed possible that investors and regulators might not be getting an accurate picture of where risks were falling because of the opacity of a system in which "off-balance-sheet" investments enabled banks to conceal their true risk-exposures.

Risk management
During the 1990’s, Value at risk computer programs based upon portfolio theory were widely adopted for measuring market risk in banking portfolios - despite objections by Barry du Toit and Avinash Persaud that they used data that had been contaminated by previous rescues, and that their use generated herding behaviour that itself contributed to instability. Some were sufficiently sophisticated to embody a recognition that probability distributions other than the familiar bell-shaped normal distribution. Many had been "stress-tested" - meaning that they had been successfully applied to past situations. However, all had used data from the period of historically low economic volatility that started in the early 1980s and is known to economists as the "great moderation". That mistake has been held to have been largely responsible for the crash of 2008 and the following recession of 2009. ..

Overview: Systemic failure
From an economic standpoint, individual bank failures need not be  a cause for concern because they  may be no more than a reflection of the fact that risk-taking is an unavoidable feature of banking; and because  the market positions vacated by those banks that do  fail because of bad management may be taken up by better-managed rivals. But the simultaneous failure of a group of banks is a different matter because it may constitute  a "systemic" threat, arising from the damage caused to other financial and non-financial enterprises. Failures that result in a major reduction  of a country's banking capital almost inevitably result in a systemic crisis as the remainder of the system falls victim to "positive feedback" because the economic damage done by initial failures results in the failure of banks that would otherwise have prospered. Positive feedback from an economic recession may similarly  lead to systemic banking failures that  further  exacerbate the originating recession.

The Asian banking crisis
Banking crises in 14 countries in East- and South-East Asia in the period 1980 to 2002 resulted in output losses estimated to average 22 per cent . Japan was the hardest hit. Credit risks stemming mainly from non-performing real-estate loans led to the closure by its deposit insurance authorities of 180 deposit-taking institutions and an output loss estimated as 48 per cent of GDP. Popular opposition made the government reluctant to make direct use of taxpayers money for general assistance to the banking system, and the banking crisis dragged on for over eight years.

The Scandinavian banking crises
The banking crises in Norway, Sweden and Finland in the 1990s have been attributed mainly to credit risks resulting from an increase in non-performing loans as economic conditions deteriorated following sharp tightenings of monetary policy . They resulted in substantial output losses and increases in unemployment, but they were eventually resolved by government measures that in many cases included guarantees to bank depositors and creditors as well as injections of capital. The Swedish government's responses, in particular, have been regarded as a model that other governments should emulate .

The crash of 2008
During the eighteen-month period between the middle of 2007 and the end of 2008 the "crash of 2008" resulted in the failure or enforced rescue of fifteen major banks, three of the world's largest mortgage-lenders and one of the world's largest insurance companies, a disaster that has been attributed to risk-management errors on the part of the banks and the principal credit-rating agencies and to inaction on the part of the regulatory authorities. The investments whose riskiness had been wrongly assessed were derivatives based upon mortgages in the United States housing market. In 2007, an international banking panic was triggered by the revelation of serious problems at a major United States bank stemming from its holdings of such derivatives, and in 2008 an international "credit crunch" was generally attributed to a loss of mutual confidence among banks that was prompted by the unexpected failure of the United States authorities to save the Lehman Brothers bank from bankruptcy. According to the Bank of England "The global banking system experienced its most severe instability since the outbreak of World War I".


 * For links to reports of the principle events of the crash of 2008 see the timelines subpage

The 19th century
In the 19th century, governments became  increasingly aware of the danger that a loss of confidence following the failure of one bank could lead to the failure of others, and eventually to failures elsewhere in the financial system. To limit that danger, they required  banks to limit the extent to which their loans exceed the funds provided by their shareholders  by the imposition of minimum "reserve ratios"  and had placed various other restrictions upon their activities. Those attempts to maintain stability had limited success. In the United States there was a protracted series of politically controversial and mainly unsuccessful attempts to regulate its rapidly expanding banking sector. At the state level, banks had to be registered with state legislatures, who set reserve requirements that were, at best, loosely enforced; and regulations intended to establish a stable banking system at the national level also turned out to be unsuccessful. In England, the collapse of the Gurney-Overend bank also prompted calls for regulation. On that occasion the Bank of England had refused to help, but the influential commentator Walter Bagehot urged that in a future panic it should "advance freely and vigorously to the public out of its reserves" in order to avoid another "run on the banks", a recommendation that is credited with the esablishment of the concept of the central bank as lender of last resort. The 1890 failure of the Barings bank further established the role of the Bank as a guardian of the English banking sector when it organised a rescue  by guaranteeing loans to it by other banks,   The Bank Charter Act of  1844  had already established it  as the only institution in England with note-issuing powers, and the Bank of England was gradually assuming in full, the role of a modern central bank.

The regulations of the early 20th century
Following the banking panic of 1907 the United States Congress created the Federal Reserve System and granted it powers to assist banks that faced demands that they would otherwise be unable to meet. The subsequent practice of central banks in the United States and elsewhere has been to assume the role of lender of last resort and provide short-term loans to solvent banks to tide them over  temporary liquidity difficulties, and  also to provide or arrange longer-term loans to avert failures that would be large enough to threaten the stability of the banking system. The next important innovation was prompted by the sequence of bank runs and failures that occurred in the period from 1929 t0 1933. The Banking Act of 1933, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, with  authority to regulate and supervise state  banks outside the Federal Reserve System and provide them with deposit insurance. The Act also prohibited combinations of commercial and investment banking. and other restrictions were also imposed upon banking activity (see the Addendum subpage). The Glass-Steagall Act introduced measures to protect depositors from risks associated with securities transactions by prohibiting commercial banks from participating in investment banking activities and from collaborating with full-service brokerage firms Restrictions upon banking activities - intended to reduce the danger of a recurrence of the financial instability experienced in the early 1930s - were imposed by most other industrialised countries. Until the 1980s, investment banks were not normally permitted to undertake non-financial activities, nor other financial activities such as branch banking, insurance or mortgage lending.

Deregulation in the 1980s
In the 1980s, however, there was extensive deregulation of the banks with the intention of increasing competition and improving efficiency. Restrictions that had prevented investment banks from broadening  their activities to include  branch banking, insurance or mortgage lending were dropped, and reserve requirements were relaxed. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999.

The Basel Committee recommendations
In 1974 the governors of the central banks of the Group of Ten leading industrial countries had set up The Basel Committee for Banking Supervision to coordinate precautionary banking regulations, and in 1988, concern about the increased danger of  systemic failure led that committee to publish a set of regulatory recommendations that related a bank's required reserve ratio to the riskiness of its loans. In 1999 further concern about the danger of instability led to the creation of the Financial Stability Forum  to promote information exchange and international co-operation in financial supervision and surveillance. In 2004, the Basel Committee published revised recommendations known as Basel II intended to require banks to take more detailed account of the riskiness of their loans. Responsibility for assessing risk was placed upon the banks and the credit agencies.

G20 summit proposals
At the meeting of the leaders of the G20 countries on 15th November 2008 it was agreed that action should be taken to:- and that (The actions that were agreed are listed in more detail at the addendum [] to the article on the G20 summit.)
 * strengthen financial market transparency and accountability,
 * strengthen regulatory regimes, prudential oversight, and risk management,
 * protect the integrity of the world's financial markets by bolstering investor and consumer protection, avoiding conflicts of interest, preventing illegal market manipulation, fraudulent activities and abuse, and protecting against illicit finance risks arising from non-cooperative jurisdictions; and promote information sharing, including with respect to jurisdictions that have yet to commit to international standards with respect to bank secrecy and transparency,
 * coordinate the regulation of financial markets and strengthen   cooperation on crisis prevention, management, and resolution,
 * regulators were to develop guidance to strengthen banks' risk management practices,
 * regulators were to ensure that financial firms improve  their management of liquidity risk,
 * the Basel Committee was to help the development of new stress testing models,
 * financial institutions were to create incentives to promote stability, and avoid  rewarding risk taking, and,
 * banks were to exercise effective risk management and due diligence over structured products and securitization.

The Volcker Rule
At a press conference on January 21st 2010, President Obama announced that
 * "Banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest, or sponsor hedge funds, private equity funds, or proprietary trading operations for their own profit, unrelated to serving their customers. If financial firms want to trade for profit, that's something they're free to do.  Indeed, doing so –- responsibly –- is a good thing for the markets and the economy.  But these firms should not be allowed to run these hedge funds and private equities funds while running a bank backed by the American people. In addition, as part of our efforts to protect against future crises, I'm also proposing that we prevent the further consolidation of our financial system.  There has long been a deposit cap in place to guard against too much risk being concentrated in a single bank.  The same principle should apply to wider forms of funding employed by large financial institutions in today's economy.".

Investment banking
Of the five Wall Street investment banks of 2007, only two remained at the end of 2008 and the survival of the investment bank format seemed open to doubt.