Friday, October 3, 2014

IMF: "The Growth of Shadow Banking"

From the International Monetary Fund's iMFdirect blog:
Shadow banking has grown by leaps and bounds around the world in the last decade.  It is now worth over $70 trillion. We take a closer look at what has driven this growth to help countries figure out what policies to use to minimize the risks involved.
In our analysis, we’ve found that shadow banks are both a boon and a bane for countries. Many people are worried about institutions that provide credit intermediation, borrow and lend money like banks, but are not regulated like them and lack a formal safety net. The largest shadow banking markets are in the United States and Europe, but in emerging markets, they have also expanded very rapidly, albeit from a low base.

In our latest Global Financial Stability Report we discuss three ways of measuring the size of shadow banking:
  • The Financial Stability Board offers a broad definition of shadow banks as nonbank financial intermediaries engaged in credit intermediation (including investment funds), and a more narrow one which excludes entities which do not directly undertake credit intermediation or which are consolidated into banking groups.
  • We compute another measure, derived from flow of funds accounts, for a smaller set of countries. It focuses on “other financial intermediaries” and excludes non-money market investment funds, since the latter mainly manage assets on behalf of clients and thus do not engage directly in credit intermediation.
  • Lastly, we propose a new, alternative definition of shadow banking as financial activities using nontraditional funding, independently of the financial institution involved. The focus on activities is one advantage of this approach. For example, securitization is classified as shadow banking, whether it is conducted on-balance sheet by banks, or off-balance sheet through special purpose vehicles.
These measures show some notable differences. They all share a similar growth trend until 2007, after which their paths diverge markedly (Figure 1). After a mild drop around 2008, the Financial Stability Board’s measures now surpass their pre-crisis levels. Positive valuation effects are one of the reasons behind the pickup in the Financial Stability Board’s measures, given the growth in the investment fund industry.
In contrast, our measures remain broadly constant or have fallen, which reflects two opposing forces: the decline in the role of certain activities after the crisis, such as securitization and securities and repo lending, and a concomitant rise in other activities, includ­ing those of country-specific entities, such as special financial institutions in the Netherlands and U.S. holding corporations....MORE
https://imfdirect.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/figure-1.jpg