Purpose - This paper examines the correlation of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) with nonperforming loans and loan loss provisions for 22 major developed countries over the 2008-2017 period. Design/methodology/approach - The study used the Pearson correlation methodology to assess the...

Forbearance is a practice of granting concessions to troubled borrowers, typically in the form of prolongation of maturity or refinancing of the loan. While economically useful in some circumstances, it can be used by banks in order to reduce the need for provisions and conceal potential losses....

We study the relationship between banks' size and risk-taking in the context of supranational banking supervision. Consistently with theoretical work on banking unions and in contrast to analyses emphasising incentives under- pinned by the too-big-to-fail effect, we find an inverse relationship...

This paper looks at the macroeconomic impact of the two policies proposed by ECB Banking Supervision to tackle the high share of non-performing loans (NPLs) on the balance sheets of euro area banks. The first is the coverage expectations for new NPLs set out in the Addendum to the ECB's NPL...

We analyse the determinants of coverage ratios and their components [nonperforming loans (NPLs) and loss loan reserves] in a large sample of European banks. We find that bank-specific factors, particularly credit risk variables (including forward-looking indicators) and capitalization, matter...

We analyse micro and macro drivers of coverage ratios in a cross–country sample of euro area banks. Among the former, we find that coverage ratios increase with the reliance on deposit funding and when asset quality is very poor. Among the latter, coverage ratios increase with GDP growth and...

Recent literature suggests that regulatory risk measures do not adequately capture the actual economic risk of bank portfolios. We shed new light on this issue by analyzing both unexpected and expected losses and their assessment according to regulatory and accounting standards. Examining a...

On 3 December EY hosted a SUERF conference on banking reform with Sir Howard Davies, the Chairman of RBS, and Dame Colette Bowe, the Chairman of the Banking Standards Board, as the two keynote speakers. Professor David Miles (Imperial College) gave the SUERF 2015 Annual Lecture on Capital and...

The Banking Euro Area Stress Test (BEAST) is a large scale semi-structural model developed to assess the resilience of the euro area banking system from a macroprudential perspective. The model combines the dynamics of a high number of euro area banks with that of the euro area economies. It...

Asset encumbrance is a central concept in the context of banks’ liquidity crises, as it is associated with their capacity to obtain secured funding. This occasional paper summarises the work carried out by the task force on asset encumbrance, bringing together analyses by the ECB and those...