Bezpieczny Bank

Karol Strzeliński
Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Warsaw.

Risk management and procyclicality in banks. Some observations from EU banking sector survey

Abstract

This article brings up the issue of procyclicality of banking activity stemming, among other things, from Basel II banking regulations and banks’ management practices. It also tries to examine the applicability of tools aimed to limit excessive credit granting (limits on LtV, DtI) as potential macroprudential solutions. It explores dominant trends in empirical studies on the issue of Basel banking regulation procyclicality and some of their shortcomings, including data used. To remedy these drawbacks and lack of some information, which seem crucial from the author’s point of view, the research survey is proposed. This article describes construction
of the survey and comments on some results obtained from the survey conducted among banks from the European Union. The author attempted to verify, among other things, whether advanced methods used in calculation of capital requirements or in credit granting process, increase probability of decreasing credit supply. It was also investigated whether banks had their own limits on credit granting that were stricter than regulatory ones and thereby anticyclical use of such limits may be limited. However, the results obtained by the author do not allow to verify them in statistically significant manner and should not be used in formulating more general proposals. Further research using the proposed methodology should be conducted under auspices of respected international organisation like World Bank, national supervisory bodies or national central banks.

Key words: capital requirement, procyclicality, bank lending survey, countercyclical buffer, macroprudential supervision

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