My long held view has been that IFSR 9 adds to the procyclicality of the banking system (see here,here, and here) and that the answer to this aspect of procyclicality liesin the way that capital buffers interact with loan loss provisioning (here, here, and here).
So it was interesting to see an article in the Financial Times overnight headlined “New accounting rules pose threat to banks amid virus outbreak”. The headline may be a bit dramatic but it does draw attention to the IFRS 9 problem I have been concerned with for some time.
The article notes signs of a backlash against the accounting rules with the Association of German Banks lobbying for a “more flexible handling” of risk provisions under IFRS 9 and warning that the accounting requirements could “massively amplify” the impact of the crisis. I agree that the potential exists to amplify the crisis but also side with an unnamed “European banking executive” quoted in the article saying “IFRS 9, I hate it as a rule, but relaxing accounting standards in a crisis just doesn’t look right”.
There may be some scope for flexibility in the application of the accounting standards (not my area of expertise) but that looks to me like a dangerous and slippery path to tread. The better option is for flexibility in the capital requirements, capital buffers in particular. What we are experiencing is exactly the kind of adverse scenario that capital buffers are intended to absorb and so we should expect them to decline as loan loss provisions increase and revenue declines. More importantly we should be seeing this as a sign that the extra capital put in place post the GFC is performing its assigned task and not a sign, in and of itself, indicating distress.
This experience will also hopefully reinforce the case for ensuring that the default position is that the Counter Cyclical Capital Buffer be in place well before there are any signs that it might be required. APRA announced that it was looking at this policy in an announcement in December 2019 but sadly has not had the opportunity to fully explore the policy initiative and implement it.
This behavior makes one blind to all sorts of things.
The first blind spot … is that it treats uncertain events – items of unknowable incidence and severity – as if they were risks that could be estimated probabilistically.
Epsilon Theory ; “Lack of Imagination” 14 March 2020
One of my recent posts drew attention to an article by John Kay promoting a book he has co-written with Mervyn King on the topic of “radical uncertainty”. Epsilon Theory offers another useful perspective on the ways in which extending probabilistic thinking beyond its zone of validity can cause us to miss the big picture.
The Epsilon Theory post focusses on the Covid 19 fallout currently playing out but is also worth reading for the broader challenges it offers anyone trying to use models and probabilities to manage real world outcomes …
FT Alphaville is one of my go to sources for information and insight. The Alphaville post flagged below discusses the discussion paper recently released by the Bank of England on the pros and cons of a Central Bank Digital Currency. It is obviously a technical issue but worth at least scanning if you have any interest in banking and ways in which the concept of “money” may be evolving.
“One thing is for certain, Italy continues to be a place that proves the axiom that banking is inherently a political business, regardless of whether it wants to be.”
I have touched on residential mortgage risk weights a couple of times in this blog, most recently in a post on the Dutch proposal to increase residential mortgage RW. This post explores the question of why residential mortgage RW under the Internal Rating Based (IRB) approach can be so low. More importantly, can we trust these very low risk weights (and the banks generating them) or is this yet more evidence that the IRB approach is an unreliable foundation for measuring bank capital requirements? It also touches on some of the issues we encounter in cross border comparisons of capital strength.
It has to be said at this point that IRB modelling is not an area where I claim deep expertise and I would welcome comments and input from people who do have this subject matter expertise. However, it is an important issue given the role that residential mortgage lending plays both in the economy as a whole. If nothing else, the post will at least help me get my thoughts on these questions into some kind of order and potentially invite comments that set me straight if I have got anything wrong. Notwithstanding the importance of the issue, this post is pretty technical so likely only of interest if you want to dig into the detailed mechanics of the IRB approach.
Recapping on the Dutch proposal to increase mortgage risk weights
First a recap on what the Dutch bank supervisor proposes to do. Residential mortgage RW in the Netherlands are amongst the lowest observed in Europe
DNB:Financial Stability Report Autumn 2019
The Dutch banks can of course cite reasons why this is justified but, in order to improve the resilience of the banking system, the Dutch banking supervisor proposes to introduce a floor set at 12% on how low the RW can be. The 12% floor applies to loans with a dynamic Loan to Value (LTV) of 55% or lower. The RW floor increases progressively as the LTV increases reaching a maximum of 45% for loans with a LTV of 100% or more. DNB expects the application of the measure to increase the average risk weights of Dutch IRB banks by 3-4 percentage points (from 11% to 14%-15%).
What drives the low end of the IRB Mortgage RW?
None of the discussion set out below is in any way intended to challenge bank supervisors seeking to apply limits to the low mortgage risk weights we observe being generated by the internal models developed by IRB banks. That is a whole separate discussion but the move to higher RW on these exposures broadly makes sense to me, not only for reasons of systemic resilience, but also with regard to the way that it reduces the disparity between IRB RW and those the standardised banks are required to operate against. It is however useful to understand what is driving the model outcomes before citing them as evidence of banks gaming the system.
This extract from Westpac’s September 2019 Pillar 3 Report shows a weighted average RW of 24% with individual segments ranging from 6% to 137%. The CBA Pillar 3 shows a similar pattern (RW range from 4.4% to 173.5%). I won’t get too much into the technical detail here but the effective IRB RW is higher when you factor in Regulatory Expected Loss. The impact on the RW in the table below is roughly 16% on average (I divide REL by .08 to translate it to an RWA equivalent and then divide by RWA) but this effect only becomes material for the 26% and higher RW bands).
Source: Westpac Pillar 3 Report – Sep 2019
I am very happy to stand corrected on the facts but my understanding is that the 6% and 14% RW bands in the table above capture “seasoned” portions of the loan portfolio where the Loan to Valuation (LVR) ratio has declined substantially from the circa 80% plus typically observed in newly originated loans. The declining LVR is of course a natural outcome for Principal and Interest loans which is the kind traditional prudent banking prefers.
What at face value looks like an incredibly thin capital requirement starts to make more sense when you consider the fact that the borrowers in these segments have demonstrated their capacity to service their loans and, perhaps more importantly, have built up a substantial pool of their own equity in the property that will absorb very substantial declines in property prices before the bank is likely to face a loss.
Australian owner occupied borrowers have an incentive to repay as fast as possible because their interest is not tax deductible (making the mortgage repayment one of the best applications of surplus cash) and they typically borrow on a floating rate basis. The natural amortisation of loan principal is also likely to have been accelerated by the progressive decline in interest rates in recent years which has seen a large share of borrowers apply the interest saving to higher principal repayments.
Comparing Dutch and Australian Mortgage Risk Weights
Looking at the Dutch RW provides some perspective on the mortgage RW of the Australian IRB banks and the initiatives APRA has implemented to increase them. I will only scratch the surface of this topic but it is interesting none the less to compare the 14-15% average RW the Dutch IRB banks will be required to hold with the 25% average RW that Australian IRB banks must hold.
The Dutch banks cite a favourable legal system that supports low LGD by allowing them to quickly realise their security on defaulted loans. That is a sound argument when you are comparing to a jurisdiction where it can take up to 3 years for a bank to gain access to the security underpinning a defaulted loan. That said, the Australian banks can make a similar argument so that does not look like a definitive factor in favour of lower Dutch RW.
The Australian LTV is based on the amortised value of the loan compared to the value of the property at the time the loan was originated. The Dutch LTV as I understand it seem to includes the updated value of the property as the loan ages. Again I don’t see anything in the Dutch system that renders their residential mortgage lending fundamentally less risky than the Australian residential mortgage.
The other positive factor cited by the Dutch banks is the tax deductibility of mortgage interest which applies even where the property is owner occupied. In Australia, interest on loans for owner occupied property is not tax deductible. The Dutch banks argue that the tax deduction on interest enhances the capacity of the borrower to service a loan but my guess is that this advantage is highly likely to be translated into higher borrowing capacity and hence higher property prices so it is not clear that there is a net improvement in the capacity to repay the loan.
I obviously only have a very rudimentary understanding of Dutch tax rules but my understanding is that tax deductibility of interest expense in some European jurisdictions is quid pro quo for including the implied value of rental on the property in the owner’s taxable income. If that is the case then it looks like tax deductibility of interest is a zero sum game from the lending bank perspective. Qualified by the caveats above, I will provisionally take the side of the Australian mortgage in this comparison. It seems equally likely to me that the the absence of a tax deduction creates an incentive for Australian borrowers to repay their loan as quickly as possible and hence for a greater proportion of loans outstanding to move into the low LVR bands that insulate the bank from the risk of loss. There does not seem to be the same incentive in the Dutch system, especially where the loans are fixed rate.
Summing up
The purpose of this post was mostly to help me think through the questions posed in the introduction. If you are still reading at this point then I fear you (like I) take bank capital questions way too seriously.
There are two main points I have attempted to explore and stake out a position on:
What at face value looks like an incredibly thin capital requirement for some parts of the residential mortgage portfolio start to make more sense when you consider the fact that the borrowers in these segments have demonstrated their capacity to service their loans and have built up a substantial pool of their own equity in the property that will absorb very substantial declines in property prices before the bank is likely to face a loss.
Cross border comparisons of capital are complicated but mortgages are a big part of the Australian bank risk profile and I still feel like they stack up relatively well in comparison to other jurisdictions that cite structural reasons why theirs are low risk.
If you have some evidence that contradicts what I have outlined above then by all means please let me know what I am missing.
Nice quote from Matt Levine’s opinion piece on the change in US bank capital requirements
“Everything in bank capital is controversial so this is controversial. Usually the controversy is that some people want higher capital requirements and other people want lower capital requirements. Here, pleasantly, part of the controversy is about whether this is a higher or lower capital requirement.“
We have already seen signs that the Australian banks recognise that they need to absorb some of the fallout from the economic impact of the Coronavirus. This commentator writing out of the UK makes an interesting argument on how much extra cost banks and landlords should volunteer to absorb.
I am not saying banks should not do this but two themes to reflect on:
1) This can be seen as part of the price of rebuilding trust with the community
2) it reinforces the cyclicality of the risk that bank shareholders are required to absorb which then speaks to what is a fair “Through the Cycle” ROE for that risk
I have long struggled with the “banks are a simple utility ” argument and this reinforces my belief that you need a higher ROE to compensate for this risk
I have been planning to write something on the relationship between capital and liquidity for a while. I have postponed however because the topic is complex and not especially well understood and I did not want to contribute to the body of misconceptions surrounding the topic. An article in the APRA Insight publications (2020 Issue One) has prompted me to have a go.
Capital Explained
The article published in APRA’s Insight publication under the title “Capital explained” offers a simple introduction to the question what capital is starting with the observation that …
“Capital is an abstract concept and has different meanings in different contexts.
Capital being abstract and meaning different things in different contexts is a good start but the next sentence troubles me.
“In non-technical contexts, capital is often described as an amount of cash or assets held by a company, or an amount available to invest.”
I am not sure that the author intended to endorse this non-technical description but it was not clear and I don’t think it should be left unchallenged, especially when the casual reader might be inclined to take it at face value. The fact that non-technical descriptions frequently state this is arguably a true statement but the article does not clarify that this description is a source of much confusion and seems to be conflating capital and liquid assets.
The source of the confusion possibly lies in double entry bookkeeping based explanations in which a capital raising will be associated with an influx of cash onto a company balance sheet. What happens next though is that the company has to decide what to do with the cash, it is extremely unlikely that the cash just sits in the company bank account. This is especially true in the case of a bank which has cash flowing into, and out of, the balance sheet every day. The influx of one source of funding (in this case equity) for the bank means that it will most likely choose to not raise some alternate form of funding (debt) on that day. The amount of cash it holds will be primarily driven by the liquidity targets it has set which are related to but in no way the same thing as its capital targets.
Time for me to put up or shut up.
How should we think about the relationship between capital and liquidity including the extent to which holding more liquid assets might, as is sometimes claimed, justify holding less capital.
Liquidity risk is mitigated by liquidity management, including holding liquid assets, but this statement offers no insight into the extent to which some residual expected or unexpected aspect of the risk still requires capital coverage (All risks are mitigated to varying extents by management but most still require some level of capital coverage)
So the assessment that holding more liquid assets reduces the need to hold capital is open to challenge
One of the core functions of capital is to absorb any increase in expenses, liabilities, loan losses or asset write downs associated with or required to resolve an underlying risk issue; the bank may need to recapitalise itself to restore the target level of solvency required to address future issues but the immediate problems are resolved without the consumption of capital compromising solvency
Liquid assets, in contrast, buy time to resolve problems but they do not in themselves solve any underlying issues that may be the root cause of the liquidity stress.
The relationship between liquidity and solvency is not symmetrical; liquidity is ultimately contingent on a bank being solvent, but a solvent bank can be illiquid.
While more liquid assets are not a substitute for holding capital, a more strongly capitalised bank is less likely to be subject to the kinds of liquidity stress events that draw on liquid assets so holding more capital relative to peer banks can reduce liquidity risk
Being relatively strong matters in scenarios where uncertainty is high and people resort to simple rules (e.g. withdraw funding from the weakest banks; even if that is not true the risk is that other people express that view and it becomes self-fulfilling)
It is important to recognise that the focus of relationship between capital and liquidity risk described above is the capital position relative to peer banks and market expectations, not the absolute stand-alone position
The “Unquestionably Strong” benchmark used in the Australian banking system to calibrate the overall target operating range for capital in the ICAAP anchors the bank’s Liquidity Risk appetite setting.
Expressed another way, the capital requirements of Liquidity Risk are embedded holistically in the capital buffer the target operating range maintains over prudential minimum capital requirements.
It is entirely possible that I am missing something here – I hope not but let me know if you see an error in my logic
Interesting post on the Bank Underground blog by Bank of England staff Joel Suss and Henry Treitel.
This extract summarises their findings
“Ourpapermakes important contributions, not least of which is practical: bank supervisors can utilise our findings to anticipate firm weaknesses and take appropriate mitigating action ahead of time.
However, the job is not done. For one, we are missing important data which is relevant for anticipating distress. For example, we haven’t included anything that speaks directly to the quality of a firm’s management and governance, nor have we included any information on organisational culture.
Moreover, our period of study only covers 2006 to 2012 – a notoriously rocky time in the banking sector. A wider swathe of data, including both good times and bad, would help us be more confident that our models will perform well in the future.
So while prediction, especially about the future, remains tough, our research demonstrates the ability and improved clarity of machine learning methodologies. Bank supervisors, armed with high-performing and transparent predictive models, are likely to be better prepared to step-in and take action to ensure the safety and soundness of the financial system.”
From the outside 