Loans are typically the largest asset class on banks' balance sheets. So understanding the value of loans is vital to any assessment of the resilience of the banking system. This is not straightforward. The market value of loans is seldom observable. And the nature and diversity of banks' loans...

The growing proportion of UK bank lending to the financial sector reached a peak in 2007 just before the onset of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This marks a trend in the dwindling amount of bank lending to private sector non-financial corporations (PNFCs), which was exacerbated with the...