Pursuit of financial stability:
The Indian experience
Dimple Bhandia
January 15, 2013
Financial Stability – In search of a definition
There is no universally accepted definition of financial stability. Definitions by
various experts abound but most definitions are not amenable to quantification.
Financial system functioning without disruption and return to steady state after
periods of volatility/vulnerability without significant impairment to longer term
prospects, is generally considered an indicator of stability.
Volatilities within an acceptable/tolerable
range can represent a state of financial
stability.
Financial Stability… Dimensions

Broad, encompassing

And Forward looking
Factors Affecting Financial Stability









Vulnerabilities
in
the
real
economy
Global imbalances and rapid
capital flows
Complex financial products and
rapid technological development
Asset price bubbles
Shadow banking system
Light touch regulation
Contagion
Interconnected markets
Too big to fail counterparties
Well….. Virtually anything….
Anywhere!!!
Why Financial Stability
 Impact – potentially severe
 Especially
markets
 Contagion
tentacles
for
–
emerging
worldwide
 Financial instability anywhere
can be a threat to financial
stability everywhere…
 Theory of decoupling weaker
than accepted
 Sectors
 Real and financial sectors
through feedback loops
Lessons learnt from the Crisis
Lessons learnt from the Crisis
Innumerable!
 Recognition of the need to pursue financial stability as
an explicit policy objective
 The Need to strengthen the macro-prudential
framework
 To see both the forest and the trees!!
 The need to better identify, assess and manage the systemic
risks prevailing in the financial sector.
 Renewed policymaker interest in developing and improving
tools to promote financial stability
Systemic Risks
Systemic events
• Can be broadly understood broadly as financial
instabilities spreading to the extent that the
financial intermediation process is impaired and
economic growth and welfare suffer materially
Systemic risks
• Risk of occurrence of a
systemic event
Systemic Risks
Time dimension:
 Financial imbalances that build up
gradually over time may unravel
suddenly.
Cross sectional dimensions:
 Contagion risk - an initially
idiosyncratic problem that becomes
more widespread, often in a
sequential fashion.
 Shared exposure to financial
market shocks or adverse
macroeconomic developments that
affect a range of financial
intermediaries and markets at the
same time
Measuring Systemic Risks
• Identification of systemic risks is
far from straightforward given
that systemic risks per se are
complex and multifaceted.
• There is a need to have a wide
range of measures and tools
covering different aspects of
systemic risks.
• A host of new quantification
measures have, post the crisis,
emerged in academic literature,
while central banks are
developing tools and techniques
which will help identify and
measure systemic risks.
Measures of systemic risk contribution
• Treat systemic risk as the extent to which individual
financial institution pollutes the “public good” of overall
financial stability
• Focus on the systemic risk contribution of individual
institutions
• In principle, such measures, if accurate, could be used for
Pigouvian taxes, levies or other regulatory interventions
aimed at internalizing the negative externalities
– The additional capital surcharge proposed to be levied on
Globally Systemically Important Banks
Modeling Risks of Aggregate Shocks
• Focus on the impact of macroeconomic shocks on the
financial system
– Adverse macroeconomic scenarios used in stress testing
– To assess resilience of financial institutions
• Macroeconomic shocks matter for financial stability!
– They tend to affect all firms in an economy, financial and
nonfinancial, at least to some extent.
– A macro shock causes an increase in correlated default losses,
with detrimental effects on financial stability.
• Stress-testing models are designed to map adverse
macro-financial scenarios into losses in shared credit
and asset exposures.
Financial Stability Reports
• Role of FSRs
• Limiting instability by pointing out key risks and
vulnerabilities to policy makers, market participants and
the public at large
• A part of the macroprudential toolkit
“These reports serve to assure the public and economic
agents that everything is well in the financial sector
when this is the case. They also serve as early warnings
when problems show up at the horizon. Early action can
then prevent any financial instability to materialise.”
–Lars Svensson (2003), NBER WP 9486
Trends in Reporting Financial Stability
Number of countries publishing FSRs
Source: “Financial Stability Reports: What are they good for”,
Martin Cihak, et al, World Bank, Dec 2011
Characteristics of FSRs
• Standalone document
• Generally central bank oriented
• Focus on risks and exposures of the financial
system
• Systemic risk
• Forward looking perspective
• Analysis of financial interconnectedness
• Regularly published
Trends in contents of FRS
• Of late
• Use of more sophisticated market based
indicators
• Use of stress testing
• Presenting results of early warning systems
• Extensive use of disaggregated data
• Extensive use of modelling
Central banks and financial stability
• Prior to the crisis
– Exclusive (excessive?) focus
on price stability
– Asset price bubbles –
central banking function?
• Greenspan orthodoxy
– Light touch regulation
– Risks identified – but no
action taken
Central banks and financial stability
• Post the crisis
– Recognition of the need to pursue financial stability as an
explicit policy objective
– Widespread amendments to regulatory infrastructure
(national and international) and legislations to pursue
financial stability
• THE HOLY TRINITY!
– Price Stability, Financial Stability and Sovereign Debt
Sustainability
The Reserve Bank of India
Raison d'être
– ……to regulate the issue of
Bank notes and the keeping
of reserves with a view to
securing monetary stability in
India and generally to
operate the currency and
credit system of the country
to its advantage
The Preamble of the Reserve
Bank of India Act, 1934
First RBI Building 1935, Kolkata
Now… “A full services central bank”
•
Monetary Authority
•
Issuer of Currency
•
Banker and Debt Manager to
Government
•
Banker to banks
•
Regulator of the Banking System
•
Manager of Foreign Exchange
•
Regulatory of Payment and
settlement systems
•
Maintaining Financial Stability
•
Development Role
RBI Central Office Building, Mumbai
Financial Stability and the Reserve Bank of India
Maintaining financial stability has been an explicit objective of the
Reserve Bank since 2004.
The Reserve Bank has, over the
years, attempted to address both
aspects of systemic risks – the
time dimension (procyclicality)
and
the
cross
sectional
dimension (interconnectedness)
within
a
macroprudential
framework, without christening
these policies as macroprudential
policies.
Board for
Financial
Supervision
Board for
Payment
and
Settlement
Systems
Separate
committees
of RBI Central
Board
responsible
for focussed
regulation
and
supervision of
institutions
and system
Financial Stability and Development Council
The FSDC, set up in 2010, is a body consisting all regulators and
the Ministry of Finance. It is the highest forum in matters
relating to financial stability. The Council is chaired by the
Union Finance Minister
Financial
Stability
Interregulatory
coordination
Financial
literacy and
financial
inclusion
The
responsibility of
FSDC includes
Financial Sector
Development
Macro
prudential
surveillance
of the
economy
The Financial Stability Unit
An operationally independent FSU was set up in July
2009 with the following mandate:
 Conduct of
macro-prudential
surveillance of the financial system
on an ongoing basis.
 Developing models for assessing
financial stability
 Conduct of systemic stress tests to
assess resilience
 Communicating risks to financial
stability
Latest tools and
techniques
- Macro-financial
stress testing
- Network Analysis
Study of
international
best practices
in systemic
risk
assessment
Systemic
Risk
Assessment
Process
In house
econometric
research and
statistical studies
to support
assertions in the
FSR
Robust and extensive
analysis of a database
of
- Off site Banking and
non banking sector
supervisory returns
- Ad hoc data requests
from financial
institutions
The Indian Financial System
Diverse but largely within a defined
regulatory perimeter
6
Scheduled Commercial Banks and LABs
4.1
Urban Cooperative Banks
13.5
Rural Cooperative Credit Institutions
and RRBs
NBFCs
2.4
Development Financial Institutions
6.5
59.3
Insurance Companies
Provident and Pension Funds
5.8
2.3
Mutual Funds
Percentage Share in total financial assets
Financial Network Analysis … (1)
 Network analysis is a tool which seeks to explore how systemic
risks are affected by the structure of the financial system …
 How does the size and distribution of exposures between banks
determine the resilience of the system as a whole?
 How does the potential for interbank exposures to transmit
shocks from one bank to another inter relate with the aggregate
amount of capital available to cushion shocks?
 Are more concentrated banking systems with a small number of
large banks, more or less susceptible systemic breakdown than
systems that comprise a large number of small banks?
 Are ‘tiered’ systems, where a small number of ‘core’ banks
coexist with a fringe of smaller banks in the ‘periphery’ more or
less susceptible to systemic breakdowns than less tiered or more
uniform systems?
Financial Network Analysis …(2)
Tiered structure of the banking system
Financial Network Analysis …(3)
The network of the financial system
Financial Network Analysis …(4)
Contagion Analysis
Banking Stability Measures
Modeling Distress dependencies among banks Probability of
Distress based on equity prices of select banks
 Joint Probability of Distress (JPoD) - probability that all banks in
the system experience large losses simultaneously.
 Banking Stability Index (BSI) - the expected number of banks
under distress if at least one bank is under distress.
4
0.005
Jun-10
3
Jun-11
Jun-12
0.004
0.003
2
0.002
Aug-12
Feb-12
May-12
JPoD
Nov-11
Aug-11
May-11
Feb-11
Nov-10
Aug-10
BSI
May-10
Feb-10
Nov-09
Aug-09
May-09
Feb-09
0
Nov-08
0
Aug-08
0.001
May-08
1
Jan-08
BSI
0.006
0.0001
0
JPoD
5
Stress testing
 Macro financial stress tests
 Testing the resilience of financial institutions to adverse
movements in macroeconomic variables
 Sensitivity Analysis
 Supplement to macro stress tests
 Assessing resilience of financial institutions to adverse
movements in a range of risk factors covering foreign
exchange, liquidity, interest rate and credit risks
 Both top down and bottom up stress testing deployed
 Stress testing the derivative portfolio of banks
 Sensitivity and Scenario analysis
Macro Stress Tests
Macro stress testes assess the vulnerability of the banking system to
extreme but plausible adverse macroeconomic shocks.
Bank group level NPA and CRAR are projected using various
econometric tools, like, multivariate regression, panel regression,
logit regression, Vector Autoregression(VAR), Quantile regression, etc.
Projected Gross NPA ratio using Different Models
(FSR June 2012)
Projected CRAR using Different Models
(FSR June 2012)
Stability Maps and Indicators… (1)
Maps and Indicators
 Macroeconomic Stability – assesses risk conditions in the
macroeconomy
 Financial Markets Stability – assesses stability of financial
markets
 Banking Stability – assesses changes in underlying
conditions/risk factors affecting the banking sector’s stability
 Financial Stability – assesses overall stability conditions in
the Indian financial system
Supplementary Indicators
emanating from




Systemic Liquidity conditions
Fiscal situation
External Sector
Housing Prices
to
assess
vulnerabilities
Stability Maps and Indicators… (2)
Financial Stability Map and Indicator
Financial Stability Map *
Financial Stability Indicator **
Macro
Stability
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
Financial
Market
Stability
Banking
Stability
0.2
(*) Away from centre implies higher risk
(**) Higher level implies lower stability
Mar-12
Dec-11
Sep-11
Jun-11
Mar-11
Dec-10
Sep-10
Jun-10
Mar-10
Jun-09
Dec-09
Mar-12
Sep-09
Sep-11
Mar-09
Mar-11
Dec-08
0.0
Stability Maps and Indicators… (3)
Macro Stability Map
Macroeconomic Stability Map *
Global
Household
Growth
Corporate
Inflation
Fiscal Index
2010-11:Q4
External
2011-12:Q2
2011-12:Q4
(*) Away from centre implies higher risk
Stability Maps and Indicators… (4)
Financial Markets Stability Map and
Indicator
Financial Markets Stability Map *
(*) Away from centre implies higher risk
Financial Markets Stability Indicator **
(**) Higher level implies lower stability
Stability Maps and Indicators… (5)
Banking Stability Map and Indicator
Banking Stability Map *
Soundness
1.0
1.0
0.8
0.9
0.6
0.8
0.4
Efficiency
Banking Stability Indicator **
Quality
0.7
0.2
0.6
0.0
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
Liquidity
Profitability
0.1
MAR11
SEP11
MAR12
(*) Away from centre implies higher risk
MAR01
SEP01
MAR02
SEP02
MAR03
SEP03
MAR04
SEP04
MAR05
SEP05
MAR06
SEP06
MAR07
SEP07
MAR08
SEP08
MAR09
SEP09
MAR10
SEP10
MAR11
SEP11
MAR12
SEP12
0.0
(**) Higher level implies lower stability
Assessment of Systemic Risks - Challenges
• Complex and opaque - Difficult to Measure
 No universally accepted definition
 Risk factors are generally not observable – hence difficult to
quantify
 Large mass of uncertainties – “known” and unknown”
 Effectiveness and appropriateness of tools is not easily
measurable
 Significant data gaps
 Challenges in “connecting the dots”
• Assessment – a “best estimate”
• Type I and Type II errors
• The Learning curve is steep!
Publishing of FSRs - Challenges
• Some financial stability issues too sensitive to be
discussed publicly
– Could trigger behaviour likely to provoke a crisis, especially in
times when the financial system is already disturbed
– Exist real, inherent constraints in communicating tail risks
• Regular publications help in preventing “over”
interpretation
• Loss of credibility
– Crying wolf – Most risks communicated will not materialise
• Data gaps and challenges in systemic risk assessment
– Validity of models/conclusions
Public policy?
• Financial stability and growth – two sides of the same
coin?
• Conventional wisdom says: financial stability promotes and
stimulates growth……
– “A stable financial system is a pre-requisite for sustainable economic
growth” (William Dudley, New York Fed, 2011)
– ……But evidence scarce!
– What about financial instability?
• Price stability and financial stability Are there trade offs?
• Return of fiscal dominance over monetary policy?
• Accountability of central banks
• The new trilemma
– The Holy Trinity of price stability, financial stability and growth
Questions?