Narrow banking

Understanding Bank Capital: A Primer

Over the past 40 years, U.S. capital markets have grown much faster than banks, so that banks’ share of credit to the private nonfinancial sector has dropped from 55% to 34% (see BIS statistics here).  Nevertheless, banks remain a critical part of the financial system. They operate the payments system, supply credit, and serve as agents and catalysts for a wide range of other financial transactions. As a result, their well-being remains a key concern. A resilient banking system is, above all, one that has sufficient capital to weather the loan defaults and declines in asset values that will inevitably come.

In this primer, we explain the nature of bank capital, highlighting its role as a form of self-insurance providing both a buffer against unforeseen losses and an incentive to manage risk-taking. We describe some of the challenges in measuring capital and briefly discuss a range of approaches for setting capital requirements. While we do not know the optimal level of capital that banks (or other intermediaries) should be required to hold, we suggest a practical approach for setting requirements that would promote the safety of the financial system without diminishing its efficiency....

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Fintech, Central Banking and Digital Currency

How will financial innovation alter the role of central banks? As the structure of banking and finance changes, what will happen to the mechanisms and frameworks for setting monetary and financial policy? Over the past several decades, with the development of inflation targeting, central banks have delivered price stability. And, improved prudential policies are making the financial system more resilient. Will fintech—ranging from the use of electronic platforms to algorithm-driven transactions that supplant the traditional provision and implementation of financial services—change any of this?

This is a very broad topic, some of which we have written about in previous posts. This post considers an innovation suggested by Barrdear and Kumhof at the Bank of England: that central banks should offer universal, unlimited access to deposit accounts. What would this “central bank digital currency” mean for the financial system? Does it make sense for central banks to compete with commercial banks in providing deposit accounts?

We doubt it. It is not an accident that—at virtually every central bank—only commercial banks today have interest-bearing deposits. Changing this would pose a risk of destabilizing the financial system....

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Narrow Banks Won't Stop Bank Runs 

Every financial crisis leads to a new call to restrict the activities of banks. One frequent response is to call for “narrow banks.” That is, change the legal and regulatory framework in a way that severely limits the assets that traditional deposit-taking banks can hold. One approach would require that all liabilities that are demandable at par be held in the form of deposits at the central bank. That is, accounts that can be withdrawn without notice and have fixed net asset value would face a 100% reserve requirement. The Depression-era “Chicago Plan” had this approach in mind.
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