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Publication

55th meeting of the ESRB General Board

At its meeting on 26 September, the General Board assessed the main risks to the EU financial stability.

Read the press release
PUBLICATION 4 October 2024

ESRB interactive risk dashboard

Check the new interactive dashboard that complements the ESRB Risk Dashboard publication. The indicators are updated in real time.

ESRB interactive risk dashboard
SPEECH 26 September 2024

Technology as a new frontier

New technologies carry both benefits for the financial system and also potential risks, says ESRB Chair Christine Lagarde. As macroprudential policymakers, we must embrace and harness innovation to keep the financial system stable and resilient.

Read the speech
CONFERENCE 2 October 2024

Eighth ESRB Annual Conference

The ESRB Annual Conference took place on 26-27 September. This year’s theme was new frontiers in macroprudential policy. The conference featured discussions with policymakers, central bankers and academics, with opening remarks from ESRB Chair Christine Lagarde.

Check out the recordings
4 October 2024
PRESS RELEASE
27 September 2024
SPEECH
Keynote speech by Olli Rehn First Vice-Chair of the ESRB and Governor of the Suomen Pankki, at eight Annual Conference of the European Systemic Risk Board: New Frontiers in Macroprudential Policy
Annexes
27 September 2024
SPEECH
26 September 2024
SPEECH
Keynote speech by Claudia Buch, Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, at the eighth European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) annual conference on “New Frontiers in Macroprudential Policy”
26 September 2024
SPEECH
Welcome address by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB and Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board, at the eighth annual conference of the ESRB
29 August 2024
PRESS RELEASE
4 October 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
Annexes
4 October 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
4 October 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
29 August 2024
ADVISORY SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE REPORT - No. 15
  • Thorsten Beck
  • Vasso Ioannidou
  • Enrico Perotti
  • Antonio Sánchez Serrano
  • Javier Suarez
  • Xavier Vives
1 August 2024
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 26
  • Antonio Sánchez Serrano
  • Isabel Andersen
Details
Abstract
We present a methodology based on quarterly sectoral accounts to build a map of the euro area financial system. The map can be used to visualise existing cross-sectoral interconnections and exposures, to analyse how the main bilateral positions have evolved over time, and to understand how past episodes of financial stress affected balance sheet structures and inter-sectoral flows. We find that the euro area financial system was essentially bank-centric when it entered the global financial crisis, and only afterwards has the importance of investment funds, government debt and central banks increased substantially. In particular, investment funds are used by euro area economic agents to gain exposure to the rest of the world and vice versa. We also document weak dynamics since the global financial crisis in lending between euro area banks and non-financial corporations. Next, we look at the financial system during the global financial crisis and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a further four episodes of financial stress (sovereign debt crisis, the US taper tantrum, the Brexit referendum, the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) and the monetary policy tightening between 2005 and 2007. While there are differences across them, we unveil interesting common features. The map can be useful in determining which sectors are resilient enough to absorb losses and whether they can serve as transmitters of stress. Finally, turning to liquidity, bank deposits, money market fund shares and securities financing transactions are key to ensure a smooth supply of liquidity and should continuously be on the radar of policymakers.
JEL Code
G01 : Financial Economics→General→Financial Crises
G20 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→General
G10 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→General
Annexes
19 July 2024
ANNUAL REPORT
27 June 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
Annexes
27 June 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
27 June 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
13 June 2024
NBFI MONITOR REPORT
Annexes
13 June 2024
NBFI MONITOR REPORT
16 April 2024
REPORTS
3 April 2024
REPORTS
28 March 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
Annexes
28 March 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
28 March 2024
RISK DASHBOARD
25 March 2024
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 25
  • André Ebner
  • Christiane Westhoff
Details
Abstract
We set out a stylised framework for the policies enacted to address the risks posed by systemically important institutions (SIIs) and to counter the too-big-to-fail (TBTF) problem, examining conceptually how far supervisory and resolution policies are complementary or substitutable. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) TBTF reforms comprise (i) a higher loss-absorbing capacity in the form of regulatory capital buffers for SIIs, (ii) more intensive and effective supervision and (iii) a recovery and resolution regime, including sufficient loss-absorbing and recapitalisation capacity in the form of capital and eligible liabilities, to deal with distressed or failing institutions. These reform strands are part of a fundamentally integrated concept, but were largely developed and implemented independently of each other. Therefore, they may fall short of fully taking interdependencies into account, rendering policies less effective and consistent than an integrated approach, which we outline as an alternative. The analysis discusses the regulatory interplay, its implications for policymaking based on the FSB TBTF reforms for banks and its operationalisation in the Basel framework at the global level and in the European Union.
JEL Code
G01 : Financial Economics→General→Financial Crises
G28 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Government Policy and Regulation
G38 : Financial Economics→Corporate Finance and Governance→Government Policy and Regulation
1 March 2024
WORKING PAPER SERIES
  • Ismael Alexander Boudiaf
  • Martin Scheicher
  • Immo Frieden
Details
Abstract
This paper studies market liquidity in interest rate swaps (IRS) before and during the global tightening of monetary policy. IRS constitute the single largest derivatives segment globally. Banks and Pension Funds extensively rely on IRS to hedge interest rate risk. Hence, providing an understanding of this market and the drivers of market liquidity is a key research question in the current market context. We use price and volume data from around 338.000 trades in the most active long-horizon swap contract denominated in EUR to construct seven liquidity measures. Taking a comprehensive approach, we ap-ply linear regressions to determine the drivers of variation in liquidity. Our liquidity measures are significantly related to monetary policy, market-wide fixed income liquidity, EURIBOR rate volatility and Dealer behaviour. Indicators for generic market stress such as VIX which are often documented in the literature are not strongly connected to IRS trading conditions.
JEL Code
G12 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→Asset Pricing, Trading Volume, Bond Interest Rates
G15 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→International Financial Markets
15 February 2024
WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 146
  • Manuel A. Muñoz
  • Oscar Soons
Details
Abstract
The bulk of cash is held for store of value purposes, with such holdings sharply increasing in times of high economic uncertainty and only a fraction of the population choosing to hoard cash. We develop a Diamond and Dybvig model with public money as a store of value and heterogeneous beliefs about bank stability that accounts for this evidence. Only consumers who are sufficiently pessimistic about bank stability hold cash. The introduction of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as a store of value lowers the storage cost of public money and induces partial bank disintermediation, which is nevertheless mitigated by an increase in relative maturity transformation. This has heterogeneous welfare consequences across the population. While cash holders always benefit by switching to CBDC, each of all other consumers may be better off or not depending on the probability of a bank run, her (and all others’) belief about such probability and the degree of technological superiority of CBDC.
JEL Code
E41 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Demand for Money
E58 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Central Banks and Their Policies
G11 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→Portfolio Choice, Investment Decisions
G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages
1 February 2024
REPORTS
15 January 2024
REPORTS
31 December 2023
FINANCIAL CRISES DATABASE
Related
31 July 2017
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES
  • Marco Lo Duca
  • Anne Koban
  • Marisa Basten
  • Elias Bengtsson
  • Benjamin Klaus
  • Piotr Kusmierczyk
  • Jan Hannes Lang
  • Carsten Detken
  • Tuomas Peltonen
18 December 2023
REPORTS
Annexes
18 December 2023
REPORTS
18 December 2023
REPORTS
7 December 2023
RISK DASHBOARD
Annexes
7 December 2023
RISK DASHBOARD
7 December 2023
RISK DASHBOARD
15 November 2023
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 24
  • Martin Scheicher
Details
Abstract
The trading of bonds and swaps largely relies on bank dealers as core market-makers. Dealers provide liquidity and trade the instruments with smaller or less active firms, in part by using their own balance sheets for inventory holding or hedging purposes. The reforms carried out in the aftermath of the global financial crisis (GFC) and the low interest rate environment have extensively changed the mechanisms and costs of trading fixed income instruments. This paper sets out to analyse the structure of trading in key over-the-counter (OTC) fixed income markets. We focus on three questions: (1) how are bonds and swaps currently traded and how liquid are these markets?, (2) how do the structural changes affect the dealer business model and market functioning?, and (3) how did the coronavirus (COVID-19) shock in March 2020 affect the OTC bond and swap market in its new post-reform set-up? To answer these questions, we combine an institutional and research perspective with a focus on key EU markets. We use public data and findings from the rich body of academic literature to describe the dealer business model and its post-GFC evolution. Overall, we argue that OTC fixed income trading is becoming “faster” due to the progress of electronic trading and the rise of non-bank traders, which has led bank dealers to make some adjustments to their market-making activities. The ongoing challenges faced in ensuring resilient provision of liquidity were also highlighted by the US bond market dislocation in March 2020.
JEL Code
G12 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→Asset Pricing, Trading Volume, Bond Interest Rates
G15 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→International Financial Markets
15 November 2023
WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 145
  • Simon Lloyd
  • Álvaro Fernández-Gallardo
  • Ed Manuel
Details
Abstract
We estimate the causal effects of macroprudential policies on the entire distribution of GDP growth for advanced European economies using a narrative-identification strategy in a quantile-regression framework. While macroprudential policy has near-zero effects on the centre of the GDP-growth distribution, tighter policy brings benefits by reducing the variance of future growth, significantly boosting the left tail while simultaneously reducing the right. Assessing a range of channels through which these effects materialise, we find that macroprudential policy particularly operates through ‘credit-at-risk’: it reduces the right tail of future credit growth, dampening booms, in turn reducing the likelihood of extreme GDP-growth outturns.
JEL Code
E32 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Business Fluctuations, Cycles
E58 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Central Banks and Their Policies
G28 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Government Policy and Regulation
5 October 2023
RISK DASHBOARD
Annexes
5 October 2023
RISK DASHBOARD
5 October 2023
RISK DASHBOARD
2 October 2023
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 23
  • Fernando González
  • Cristina Morar Triandafil
Details
Abstract
The European significant risk transfer (SRT) securitisation market is increasingly being used by major EU banks to manage risk and capital, but is not well known. SRT can provide an extra source of capital, flexibly and at a reasonable cost. Despite the bespoke nature of transactions, the SRT market has expanded significantly in the recent past to the point where it has now become a dependable way for banks to release capital, manage their balance sheets and improve their capital ratios. Banking supervisors assess SRT transactions to evaluate the degree of risk transfer from banks to investors, allowing institutions to achieve capital relief when this is considered sufficient. The market has become a permanent feature in European banks’ capital management toolkit, alongside other standard but better-known instruments. Drawing on the ECB’s unique and comprehensive database of SRT securitisations issued by large European banks supervised by the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), we provide an overview of the main features of the European SRT market, a typology of the structures currently in use and an account of the market’s evolution over the past five years. In so doing, we attempt to shed light on the main conceptual features of SRT securitisations in relation to non-SRT securitisation structures, as well as the regulatory processes behind capital relief that have been instrumental in supporting their increased use by European banks.
JEL Code
G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages
G28 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Government Policy and Regulation
G29 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Other
15 September 2023
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 22
  • Constanze Fay
  • Angelica Ghiselli
Details
Abstract
This research explores two aspects of European insurers’ investment behaviour related to crises. While they are often considered as financial market stabilisers and long-term investors, there is currently a lack of knowledge about insurers’ investment behaviour in crises under the regulatory Solvency II regime implemented in 2016. With assets of nearly €9 trillion and bond holdings of more than €3 trillion in Q2 2022, European insurers are important financial intermediaries and finance European economies. With an empirical study, we investigate their reaction to the asset price shock at the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 and explore cyclical investment behaviour by replicating Timmer’s (2018) study with fixed effects panel regressions. We use a large cross-country dataset, with the novelty of exploiting cross-country heterogeneity for European countries with 458,758 security-level observations from 2017 to 2022. Overall, our findings are very relevant from a policy perspective as they suggest active and heterogeneous cyclical investment behaviour in the European insurance market with differences across issuer and holder countries of domicile.
JEL Code
G01 : Financial Economics→General→Financial Crises
G11 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→Portfolio Choice, Investment Decisions
G15 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→International Financial Markets
G22 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Insurance, Insurance Companies, Actuarial Studies
G28 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Government Policy and Regulation
4 September 2023
REPORTS
1 August 2023
WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 144
  • Andrea Orame
  • Rodney Ramcharan
  • Roberto Robatto
Details
Abstract
We study whether regulation that relies on historical cost accounting (HCA) rather than mark-to-market accounting (MMA) to insulate banks’ net worth from financial market volatility affects the transmission of quantitative easing (QE) through the bank lending channel. Using detailed supervisory data from Italian banks and taking advantage of a change in accounting rules, we find that HCA makes banks significantly less responsive to QE than MMA. Hence, while HCA can insulate banks’ balance sheets during periods of distress, it also weakens the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy in reducing firms’ credit constraints through the bank lending channel.
JEL Code
G28 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Government Policy and Regulation
E52 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Monetary Policy
M48 : Business Administration and Business Economics, Marketing, Accounting→Accounting and Auditing→Government Policy and Regulation
3 July 2023
ANNUAL REPORT
2 September 2024
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
19 August 2024
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
19 August 2024
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
19 August 2024
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
1 July 2024
OPINIONS
Annexes
1 July 2024
OPINIONS
30 April 2024
OPINIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (1) +
Select your language
Annexes
30 April 2024
OPINIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (1) +
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23 April 2024
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
17 April 2024
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
4 April 2024
STRESS TESTING
6 March 2024
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
17 January 2024
OPINIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (2) +
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Annexes
17 January 2024
OPINIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (2) +
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16 January 2024
OPINIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (1) +
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Annexes
16 January 2024
OPINIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (1) +
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19 December 2023
OPINIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (1) +
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Annexes
19 December 2023
OPINIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (1) +
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19 December 2023
STRESS TESTING
Annexes
5 December 2023
STRESS TESTING
19 December 2023
STRESS TESTING
19 December 2023
RECOMMENDATIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (1) +
Select your language
Annexes
19 December 2023
RECOMMENDATIONS
English
OTHER LANGUAGES (1) +
Select your language
5 October 2023
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
5 October 2023
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
5 October 2023
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
2 October 2023
OPINIONS
Annexes
2 October 2023
OPINIONS
2 October 2023
RESPONSES AND LETTERS
1 August 2024
6 July 2024
1 July 2024
30 June 2024
30 June 2024
27 June 2024
26 June 2024
24 June 2024
13 June 2024
4 April 2024
15 March 2024
26 January 2024
11 January 2024
1 January 2024
29 December 2023
28 December 2023
27 December 2023
22 December 2023
20 December 2023
19 December 2023
19 December 2023
18 December 2023
15 December 2023
15 December 2023
15 December 2023