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Report
Extend-and-Pretend in the U.S. CRE Market
We show that banks “extended-and-pretended” their impaired CRE mortgages in the post-pandemic period to avoid writing off their capital, leading to credit misallocation and a buildup of financial fragility. We detect this behavior using loan-level supervisory data on maturity extensions, bank assessment of credit risk, and realized defaults for loans to property owners and REITs. Extend-and-pretend crowds out new credit provision, leading to a 4.8–5.3 percent drop in CRE mortgage origination since 2022:Q1 and fuels the amount of CRE mortgages maturing in the near term. As of 2023:Q4, ...
Discussion Paper
The Nonbank Shadow of Banks
Financial and technological innovation and changes in the macroeconomic environment have led to the growth of nonbank financial institutions (NBFIs), and to the possible displacement of banks in the provision of traditional financial intermediation services (deposit taking, loan making, and facilitation of payments). In this post, we look at the joint evolution of banks—referred to as depository institutions from here on—and nonbanks inside the organizational structure of bank holding companies (BHCs). Using a unique database of the organizational structure of all BHCs ever in existence ...
Discussion Paper
A Retrospective on the Life Insurance Sector after the Failure of Silicon Valley Bank
Following the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, the stock prices of U.S banks fell amid concerns about the exposure of the banking sector to interest rate risk. Thus, between March 8 and March 15, 2023, the S&P 500 Bank index dropped 12.8 percent relative to S&P 500 returns (see right panel of the chart below). The stock prices of insurance companies tumbled as well, with the S&P 500 Insurance index losing 6.4 percent relative to S&P 500 returns over the same time interval (see the center panel below). Yet, insurance companies’ direct exposure to the three failed banks (Silicon Valley Bank, ...
Report
The Nonbank Footprint of Banks
U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) have developed a very significant nonbank footprint over the years, adding thousands of specialty lenders, brokers and dealers, asset management, and insurance subsidiaries to their organizations. These nonbank subsidiaries represent a sizeable share of aggregate BHC assets and a significant component of the entire U.S. nonbank industry. We argue that liquidity management synergies are an important driver of the coexistence of commercial banks and nonbank subsidiaries within BHCs. Using unique data on BHC organizational structure and financial reports, we ...
Report
Fed Transparency and Policy Expectation Errors: A Text Analysis Approach
This paper seeks to estimate the extent to which market-implied policy expectations could be improved with further information disclosure from the FOMC. Using text analysis methods based on large language models, we show that if FOMC meeting materials with five-year lagged release dates—like meeting transcripts and Tealbooks—were accessible to the public in real time, market policy expectations could substantially improve forecasting accuracy. Most of this improvement occurs during easing cycles. For instance, at the six-month forecasting horizon, the market could have predicted as much ...