risk-weighting Archives - the patient investor

July 20, 2017

Australia: APRA capitulates to Big Four banks

From Clancy Yeates at The Age:

Quelling investor fears over moves to strengthen the financial system, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority on Wednesday said major banks would have until 2020 to increase their levels of top-tier capital by about 1 percentage point, to 10.5 per cent.

The target was much more favourable to banks than some analyst predictions, with some bank watchers in recent months warning lenders may need to raise large amounts of equity or cut dividends to satisfy APRA’s long-running push for “unquestionably strong” banks.

Markets are now confident banks will hit APRA’s target, estimated to require about $8 billion in extra capital from the big four, through retained earnings or by selling new shares through their dividend reinvestment plans…..

“The scenario where banks had to raise significant capital appears to be off the table for now,” said managing partner at Arnhem Asset Management, Mark Nathan.

Mr Nathan said the banks’ highly prized dividends also looked “safer”, though were not likely to increase. National Australia Bank and Westpac in particular have high dividend payout ratios, which could put dividends at risk from other factors, such as a rise in bad debts……

APRA’s chair Wayne Byres said the changes could be achieved in an “orderly” way, and the new target would lower the need for any future taxpayer support for banks.

“APRA’s objective in establishing unquestionably strong capital requirements is to establish a banking system that can readily withstand periods of adversity without jeopardising its core function of financial intermediation for the Australian community,” he said.

APRA chairman Wayne Byres used the words “lower the need for any future taxpayer support.” Not “remove the need…..” That means banks are not “unquestionably strong” and taxpayers are still on the hook.

A capital ratio of 10.5% sounds reasonable but the devil is in the detail. Tier 1 Capital includes convertible (hybrid) debt and risk-weighted assets are a poor reflection of total credit exposure, including only that portion of assets that banks consider to be at risk.

Recent bailout experiences in Europe revealed regulators reluctant to convert hybrid capital, included in Tier 1, because of fears of panicking financial markets.

Take Commonwealth Bank (Capital Adequacy and Risks Disclosures as at 31 March 2017) as a local example.

The Tier 1 Capital Ratio is 11.6% while Common Equity Tier 1 Capital (CET1), ignoring hybrids, is more than 17% lower at 9.6%.

But CBA risk-weighted assets of $430 billion also significantly understate total credit exposure of $1,012 billion.

The real acid-test is the leverage ratio which compares CET1 to total credit exposure. For Commonwealth this works out at just over 4.0%. How can that be described as “unquestionably strong”?

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari conducted a study last year in the US and concluded that banks need a leverage ratio of at least 15% to avoid future bailouts. Even higher if they are considered too-big-to-fail.

July 20, 2015

APRA confirms further capital adequacy measures

From Robin Christie:

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has confirmed that the country’s largest banks will face increased capital adequacy requirements for residential mortgage exposures – and hasn’t ruled out further rises.

The regulator made it clear yesterday that the new rules would be an interim measure based on the Financial System Inquiry’s (FSI) recommendations – and that it was keenly awaiting guidance from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision before making any further changes.

The new measures, which come into effect on 1 July 2016, mandate that authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) that are accredited to use the internal ratings-based (IRB) approach to credit risk must increase their average risk weight on Australian residential mortgage exposures to at least 25 per cent. According to APRA, the current average risk weight figure sits at around 16 per cent….

This is a welcome first step. Increases in bank capital will improve economic stability. Even at 25 percent, however, a capital ratio of 10% would mean that banks are holding 2.5 percent capital against residential mortgages. Further increases over time will be necessary.

December 8, 2014

Murray has endorsed macroprudential | Macrobusiness.com.au

Posted by Houses and Holes
At 12:52pm on December 8, 2014
Published with permission from Macrobusiness.com.au.

From Callam Pickering:

The one glaring problem with the Financial System Inquiry is that it didn’t push hard for the introduction of macroprudential policies. That takes the heat off both the RBA and APRA.

The truth is that higher capital requirements — combined with higher risk weighting on mortgages and tax reform — would have a similar (potentially larger) effect as macroprudential policies. In the long term financial system and tax reform is clearly the better approach to creating an efficient and sustainable housing and financial sector, but these reforms will take longer to implement.

That’s right. Murray’s principle recommendations are macroprudential. APRA is now free (and is being urged) to implement higher capital requirements. They do not require anything from government to go ahead. This is basically the model of MP envisaged by Prof Ross Garnaut.

A more interesting question is whether or not APRA will still act on specific areas of risk such as interest-only loans. These are a menace, as the US bust showed, and are surging. Murray did not mention them, being too granular, but said the following on MP more particularly:

The global financial crisis (GFC) prompted policy makers and regulators around the world to reconsider their approach to maintaining financial stability. Some countries at the epicentre of the crisis have since expanded their prudential perimeters and adopted more formal and centralised institutional arrangements. This includes establishing single entities with responsibility for macro-prudential regulation. Australia has long adopted what could be called a ‘macro-prudential’ approach to supervision under the rubric of financial stability. Yet, Australia’s institutional structure is relatively informal and decentralised. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and APRA each have responsibility for financial stability. However, most macro-prudential tools can only be deployed by APRA. This places a strong premium on cooperation between the two agencies.

Against the background of developments overseas, the Inquiry has considered whether Australia should change its institutional arrangements for making and implementing financial stability policy.

However, the Inquiry does not see a strong case for change in this area. Although approach has advantages and disadvantages, alternative institutional approaches are yet to be tested — as indeed is the effectiveness of many macro-prudential tools. For this reason, the Inquiry recommends no fundamental change to the current institutional arrangements for financial stability policy and no change to the prudential perimeter at this time.

That is neither here nor there and APRA will still be free to raise capital requirements for specific loans if it sees fit.

December 8, 2014

Australian banks rally on Murray Report

The ASX 200 Financial sector (ex-REITs) responded well to release of David Murray’s report into the financial services industry. As the largest constituent of the ASX 200 index, comprising more than one-third of market capitalization, sector performance is critical in determining future direction of the broader index. Breach of resistance at 7220 suggests that the correction is over. Follow-through above 7400 would confirm a fresh primary advance.

ASX 200 Financial ex Property

David Murray’s Financial System Inquiry

The Final Report of the Financial System Inquiry, led by ex-Commonwealth Bank CEO David Murray, calls on Australian banks to become “unquestionably strong” to prevent another financial crisis. The FSI calls for increased bank capital in the form of common equity, with capital ratios increasing from an average of 9.1% to the 12.2% threshold for the top quartile of international banks. The FSI also proposes that banks increase their average risk-weighting for home mortgages to 25-30% compared to current weightings as low as 15%.

Chris Joye from the AFR estimates that the first proposal would require about $21 billion in new capital, while increased risk-weighting would require an additional $15 billion. There may be some overlap between the two, but the combined requirement is likely to be more that $30 billion.

Impact on consumers is likely to be negligible. The FSI projects that a 1% increase in bank capital ratios would increase the weighted cost of capital by 6 basis points (0.06%) because of the higher cost of equity capital.

Bank Funding Costs with Increased Capital

But this does not take account of lower risk premiums required, for debt and equity, when capital is increased. A reduction of debt funding costs to 3.65% and equity to 14.75% would offset the increase in equity capital; so the actual cost increase may be considerably smaller.

A resilient banking system would not only avoid significant losses of GDP (as high as 158 percent) in the event of a financial crisis, but would save up to 900,000 jobs according to the FSI. In addition, reduced risk of a government bailout would minimize the threat to government debt levels and Australia’s AAA credit rating. Banks would also benefit through improved profitability and stronger growth prospects.

My concerns with FSI are mainly long-term. Raising capital ratios to the top quartile of international banks would certainly improve the resilience of Australian banks, but this is a moving target. We can expect average capital held by international banks to increase as other countries conduct their own reviews into the adequacy of bank funding. Also, leverage ratios (ignoring risk-weighting) remain low and should be progressively lifted towards a long-term goal of 6 to 8 percent. Reliance solely on risk-weighted capital ratios can encourage industry-wide concentration in low-risk-weighted assets which in turn will elevate risk. Lastly, bail-in bonds are dangerous — any attempt at conversion would destroy creditor confidence in the banking system with far-reaching repercussions — and should be discouraged.

I believe that stronger capital ratios are a win for both Australian taxpayers and bank shareholders. Implementation of the FSI recommendations would be a major advance towards building a resilient and sustainable banking sector.

November 10, 2014

Global Bank Regulator Calls for Larger Capital Cushions | CFO

Matthew Heller reports that the Financial Stability Board, chaired by BOE Governor Mark Carney, is set to table fresh proposals at the upcoming G20 meeting in Brisbane. The world’s top 30 “systemically important” banks will be required to substantially increase their capacity to absorb losses without requiring a bailout.

The new rules would require global systemically important banks to hold minimum capital of 6% of total assets against losses — twice the provisional leverage ratio required by Basel III rules. In addition, banks would be required to have capital equal to at least 16% and as much as 20% of their risk-weighted assets, such as loans.

Even if the big four banks in Australia are not on the list, they are systemically important from an Australian perspective and should hold similar levels of capital.

October 21, 2014

RBA targets mortgage lending

Barclays: RBA considers macroprudential by end of 2014 and double risk-weight for investor home loans | MacroBusiness http://t.co/Go0jLA0Xgg

— Colin Twiggs (@Colin_Twiggs) October 22, 2014

September 10, 2014

Big banks may need $41b more capital, UBS says

From Chris Joye at AFR:

UBS’s more likely scenario of a 3 per cent TBTF capital buffer combined with an increase in the average mortgage risk weight to 25 per cent gives a total capital shortfall of $41.1 billion for the majors.

Risk-weightings, especially for residential mortgages are coming under increased scrutiny. The big four banks have a major advantage in this area, employing risk-weightings as low as 15% to 20% based on their historical record of low defaults. But that history includes a credit boom lasting more than 2 decades which fueled an unprecedented rise in housing prices and is unlikely to be repeated in the future.

APRA alluded to this problem in its second FSI submission:

..APRA also highlighted the problem with the major banks’ predicting their own probabilities of defaults on home loans in the absence of a recession in 23 years and the much lower levels of housing leverage in 1991.“The Basel Committee is currently reviewing the validity and reliability of risk weights generated under the IRB approach [used by the majors] in response to studies showing that the variability … is much greater than could be explained by differences in underlying risks,” APRA said.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked. ~ Warren Buffett

September 7, 2014

Financial reform: Call to arms | FT.com

Martin Wolf on how much capital banks should be required to hold:

The new regulatory regime is an astonishingly complex response to the failures of this model. But “keep it simple, stupid” is as good a rule in regulation as it is in life. The sensible solution seems clear: force banks to fund themselves with equity to a far greater extent than they do today.

So how much capital would do? A great deal more than the 3 per cent ratio being discussed in Basel is the answer. As Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig argue in their important book, The Bankers’ New Clothes, significantly higher capital – with true leverage certainly no greater than 10 to one and, ideally, lower still – would bring important advantages: it would limit the implicit subsidy to banks, particularly “too big to fail” ones; it would reduce the need for such intrusive and complex regulation; and it would lower the likelihood of panics.

An important feature of higher capital requirements is that these should not be based on risk-weighting. In the event, the risk weights used before the crisis proved extraordinarily fallible, indeed grossly misleading…..

There is no magic in the number of 10 times leverage (or 10% Tier 1 Capital to Total Assets) but the larger the buffer, the greater the protection against fluctuations in asset values. The Basel III minimum leverage ratio of 3% is too low to offer adequate protection, even with the highest quality assets, and while 10% is not readily attainable in the short-term, it makes a suitable long-term target.

August 22, 2014

Bank Watch: US Tsy’s OFR Finds Risk Weighting Has No Clothes | MNI

Denny Gulino writes on recent research commissioned by Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research (“OFR”) to investigate the validity of using risk-weightings to determine bank capital requirements:

On risk weighting, OFR commissioned researchers Paul Glasserman at Columbia University and Wanmo Kang of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology to examine the subject from the ground up. As much as the practice has been incorporated in regulatory parlance, they were able to find very little other research on the validity of the weighting methodology.

“Risk weights implicitly assign prices in terms of additional capital to asset categories and thus inevitably create incentives for banks to choose some assets over others,” they wrote.

“Surprisingly,” they went on, “the ideal risk weights turn out to have little to do with risk and are instead proportional to the profitability on each asset.”

July 16, 2014

Australia: UBS eyes $23b capital hit to big banks

Chris Joye at AFR reports on a recent study by UBS banking analysts Jonathon Mott and Adam Lee. The two believe that David Murray’s financial system inquiry is likely to recommend an increase of 2 to 3% in major banks tier 1 capital ratios.

Based on an extra 3 per cent capital buffer for too-big-to-fail banks, UBS finds that the major banks would have to “increase common equity tier one capital by circa $23 billion above current forecasts by the 2016 financial year end”.

…This automatically lowers the major banks’ average return on equity at the end of the 2016 financial year from 15.4 per cent to 14.3 per cent, or by about 116 basis points across the sector. Commonwealth Bank and Westpac come off best according to the analysis, with ANZ and National Australia Bank hit much harder.

Readers should bear in mind that capital ratios are calculated on risk-weighted assets and not all banks employ the same risk-weightings, with CBA more highly leveraged than ANZ. As I pointed out earlier this week, regulators need to monitor both risk-weighted capital ratios and un-weighted leverage ratios to prevent abuse of the system.

Bear in mind, also, that a fall in return on equity does not necessarily mean shareholders will be worse off. Strengthening bank balance sheets will lower their relative risk, improve their cost of funding, and enhance valuations.