Relationship Between Banks' Capacity to Absorb Deposits and the Issuance of Wealth Management Products and its Economic Consequences
HU Shiyang,ZHU Jigao,LU Zhengfei
School of Economics and Business Administration, Chongqing University; Business School, University of International Business and Economics; Guanghua School of Management, Peking University
Summary: Summary: Wealth management products (WMPs) are a kind of off-the-balance-sheet asset in commercial banks. Compared to deposits, there are fewer limits on the interest rate of WMPs. Furthermore, WMPs have no impact on loan-to-deposit ratios, and the capital raised by WMPs can be used more flexibly (Hachem and Song, 2016; Acharya et al., 2016). As WMPs are more loosely regulated, previous studies have considered WMPs as a form of shadow banking (Hachem and Song, 2016; Zhu et al., 2016; Acharya et al., 2016). Specifically, WMPs are considered a type of regulatory arbitrage behavior by commercial banks. However, most studies focused on the effect of financial regulation on commercial banks' issuance of WMPs: they investigated the macro influence of WMPs on the monetary market and the conduction mechanism of monetary policy. The following questions have not been addressed: (1) Do idiosyncratic differences between commercial banks affect their issuance of WMPs under certain financial regulation contexts？ (2) What micro-factors affect the issuance of WMPs by commercial banks？ Building on Acharya et al. (2016) and Hachem and Song (2016), we study the idiosyncratic characteristics of commercial banks. Based on manually collected data of commercial banks of China, we investigate the relationship between commercial banks' capacity to absorb deposits and the issuance of WMPs. We also investigate the economic consequences of issuing WMPs from the perspective of commercial banks' operating risks. We find that the capacity to absorb deposits is one of the most important determinants of the scale of WMPs issued by commercial banks. The lower a commercial bank's capacity to absorb deposits, the more WMPs it issues and the higher the yield rate of the WMPs. Specifically, we measure four factors affecting banks' capacity to absorb deposits: (1) the type of commercial banks, (2) the quantity of branches, (3) the local loan-to-deposit ratios, and (4) the intensity of local financial institutions. We find the following: regional and small-scale city banks issue more WMPs with higher yield rates than national banks such as the four state-owned commercial banks (hereafter the “Big 4”); commercial banks with fewer branches issue more WMPs with higher yield rates; commercial banks in territories with higher local loan-to-deposit ratios issue more WMPs at higher yield rates; and banks in locations with more intensive local financial institutions issue more WMPs with higher yield rates. We also find that the more non-guaranteed WMPs issued by commercial banks, the higher their operating risk is, as non-guaranteed WMPs magnify the volatility of the banks' operating performance. Further study shows that the relationship between banks' capacity to absorb deposits and the issuance of WMPs is more pronounced when the interbank rate is high, indicating that the financial market is tight (Acharya et al., 2016). Commercial banks, which lack deposits, prefer to issue short-term WMPs because, as previous studies have shown, short-term WMPs are more cost-effective for commercial banks (Luo et al., 2013). This study makes two contributions. (1) Building on previous studies (Hachem and Song, 2016; Acharya et al., 2016; Zhu et al., 2016), our study reveals the substitutional relationship of WMPs and deposits in commercial banks. We find that the capacity of commercial banks to absorb deposits is one of the most significant factors affecting the issuance and yield rates of WMPs. This study also reveals a new aspect of WMPs, which enriches the existing research on regulatory arbitrage and shadow banking. (2) This study analyzes the economic consequences of issuing WMPs in terms of individual risk for commercial banks. The results show that non-guaranteed WMPs increase the operating risk of commercial banks. Our findings may indicate that the uncertainty of non-guaranteed WMPs increases volatility in the business performance of commercial banks. These findings are useful references for regulators interested in financial system reform and the reform of the deposit interest rate system in China.
胡诗阳, 祝继高, 陆正飞. 商业银行吸收存款能力、发行理财及其经济后果研究[J]. 金融研究, 2019, 468(6): 94-112.
HU Shiyang, ZHU Jigao, LU Zhengfei. Relationship Between Banks' Capacity to Absorb Deposits and the Issuance of Wealth Management Products and its Economic Consequences. Journal of Financial Research, 2019, 468(6): 94-112.
Acharya, V. V., P. Schnabl and G. Suarez. 2013. “Securitization without Risk Transfer” Journal of Financial Economics, 107(3): 515~536.
[10]
Acharya, V. V., J. Qian and Z. S. Yang. 2016. “In the Shadow of Banks: Wealth Management Products and Issuing Banks' Risk in China” Working paper.
[11]
Beck T., A. DemirgüÇ-Kunt and R. Levine. 2006. “Bank Concentration, Competition, and Crises: First Results” Journal of Banking & Finance, 30(5): 1581~1603.
[12]
Gennaioli, N., A. Shleifer and R. Vishny. 2013. “A Model of Shadow Banking” Journal of Finance, 68(4): 1331~1363.
[13]
Gorton G. and A. Metrick. 2012. “Securitized Banking and the Run on Repo” Journal of Financial Economics, 104(3): 425~451.
[14]
Hachem, K. C. and Z. M. Song. 2016. “Liquidity Regulation and Unintended Financial Transformation in China” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working paper.
[15]
Holmstrom, B.. 1979. “Moral Hazard and Observability” Journal of Economics, 10: 74~91.
[16]
Houston, J., C. Lin, P. Lin, and Y. Ma. 2010. Creditor Rights, Information Sharing and Bank Risk Taking, Journal of Financial Economics, 96(3): 485~512.
[17]
Houston, J. F., C. Hachem, C. Lin and Y. Ma. 2012. “Regulatory Arbitrage and International Bank Flows” Journal of Finance, 67(5): 1845~1895.
[18]
Keeley, M.. 1990. “Deposit Insurance, Risk and Market Power in Banking” American Economic Review, 80: 1183~1200.
[19]
Laeven, L. and R. Levine. 2009. “Bank Governance, Regulation and Risk Taking” Journal of Financial Economics, 93(2): 259~275.
[20]
Petersen M. A.. 2009. “Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches” Review of Financial Studies, 22(1): 435~480.
[21]
Pozsar, Z., T. Adrian, A. Ashcraft and H. Boesky. 2010. “Shadow Banking” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Report, no. 458 Working paper.
[22]
Rao, P., H. Yue and J. Zhu. 2015. “An Investigation of Credit Borrower Concentration” Journal of Banking & Finance, 54: 208~221.
