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44 posts on "Systemic Risk"
October 1, 2024

Are Nonbank Financial Institutions Systemic?

Photo: dominoes spilling on a blue background.

Recent events have heightened awareness of systemic risk stemming from nonbank financial sectors. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, liquidity demand from nonbank financial entities caused a “dash for cash” in financial markets that required government support. In this post, we provide a quantitative assessment of systemic risk in the nonbank sectors. Even though these sectors have heterogeneous business models, ranging from insurance to trading and asset management, we find that their systemic risk has common variation, and this commonality has increased over time. Moreover, nonbank sectors tend to become more systemic when banking sector systemic risk increases.

June 20, 2024

The Growing Risk of Spillovers and Spillbacks in the Bank‑NBFI Nexus

Decorative image: View of high rise glass building and dark steel in London

Nonbank financial institutions (NBFIs) are growing, but banks support that growth via funding and liquidity insurance. The transformation of activities and risks from banks to a bank-NBFI nexus may have benefits in normal states of the world, as it may result in overall growth in (especially, credit) markets and widen access to a wide range of financial services, but the system may be disproportionately exposed to financial and economic instability when aggregate tail risk materializes. In this post, we consider the systemic implications of the observed build-up of bank-NBFI connections associated with the growth of NBFIs.

November 6, 2023

Banking System Vulnerability: 2023 Update

decorative image: first republic bank building photographed from the ground looking up toward the sky with a few tall buildings next to it.

The bank failures that occurred in March 2023 highlighted how unrealized losses on securities can make banks vulnerable to a sudden loss of funding. This risk, which materialized following the rapid rise in interest rates that began in early 2022, underscores the importance of monitoring the vulnerabilities of the banking system. In this post, as in previous years, we provide an update of four analytical models aimed at capturing different aspects of vulnerability of the U.S. banking system, with data through the second quarter of 2023. In addition, we discuss changes made to the methodology based on the lessons from March 2023 and assess how the system-level vulnerability has evolved.

June 16, 2023

2023 State‑of‑the‑Field Conference on Cyber Risk to Financial Stability

Decorative image: hand holding mobile device with cyber risk icon image overlay.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) co-organized the fourth annual State-of-the-Field Conferences on Cyber Risk to Financial Stability, on April 14, 2023.  The conference builds on joint activity by the New York Fed and SIPA since 2017. Each year, the conference convenes panels to confront the same three questions: What are we learning about cyber risk to financial stability? What are we doing to improve resilience and stability? And what’s next? This blog post reviews some of these conversations from the 2023 conference.

May 23, 2023

Financial Stability and Interest Rates

Decorative photo: green image of coins with bar and line chart super imposed.

In a recent research paper we argue that interest rates have very different consequences for current versus future financial stability. In the short run, lower real rates mean higher asset prices and hence higher net worth for financial institutions. In the long run, lower real rates lead intermediaries to shift their portfolios toward risky assets, making them more vulnerable over time. In this post, we use a model to highlight the challenging trade-offs faced by policymakers in setting interest rates.

May 22, 2023

Financial Vulnerability and Macroeconomic Fragility

Decorative photo: blue image of coins with bar and line chart super imposed.

What is the effect of a hike in interest rates on the economy? Building on recent research, we argue in this post that the answer to this question very much depends on how vulnerable the financial system is. We measure financial vulnerability using a novel concept—the financial stability interest rate r** (or “r-double-star”)—and show that, empirically, the economy is more sensitive to shocks when the gap between r** and current real rates is small or negative.

April 20, 2023

CRISK: Measuring the Climate Risk Exposure of the Financial System

Photo: windmill farm with solar panels on the ground around them; story about climate change and bank risk.

A growing number of climate-related policies have been adopted globally in the past thirty years (see chart below). The risk to economic activity from changes in policies in response to climate risks, such as carbon taxes and green subsidies, is often referred to as transition risk. Transition risk can adversely affect the real economy through […]

April 18, 2023

Monitoring Banks’ Exposure to Nonbanks: The Network of Interconnections Matters

Decorative image: View of high rise glass building and dark steel in London

The first post in this series discussed the potential exposure of banks to the open-end funds sector, by virtue of commonalities in asset holdings that expose banks to balance sheet losses in the event of an asset fire sale by these funds. In this post, we summarize the findings reported in a recent paper of ours, in which we expand the analysis to consider a broad cross section of non-bank financial institution (NBFI) segments. We unveil an innovative monitoring insight: the network of interconnections across NBFI segments and banks matters. For example, certain nonbank institutions may not have a meaningful asset overlap with banks, but their fire sales could nevertheless represent a vulnerability for banks because their assets overlap closely with other NBFIs that banks are substantially exposed to.

November 14, 2022

Banking System Vulnerability: 2022 Update

To assess the vulnerability of the U.S. financial system, it is important to monitor leverage and funding risks—both individually and in tandem. In this post, we provide an update of four analytical models aimed at capturing different aspects of banking system vulnerability with data through 2022:Q2, assessing how these vulnerabilities have changed since last year. The four models were introduced in a Liberty Street Economics post in 2018 and have been updated annually since then.

October 21, 2022

Federal Reserve System Conference on the Financial Stability Considerations for Monetary Policy

How does monetary policy affect financial vulnerabilities and, in turn, how does the state of the financial system interact with the maximum employment and price stability goals of monetary policy? These were the key questions covered in the September 30 conference organized by the Federal Reserve System. The conference was co-led by Federal Reserve Board Vice Chair Lael Brainard and Federal Reserve Bank of New York President and CEO John C. Williams, each of whom offered prepared remarks. The program also included a panel of current and former central bank policymakers to explore the themes of the conference, as well as paper presentations with discussants. In this post, we discuss highlights of the conference. The agenda includes links to all of the presentations as well as videos for each session. 

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