Usability of Bank Capital Buffers: The Role of Market Expectations

Download or read book Usability of Bank Capital Buffers: The Role of Market Expectations written by José Abad and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2022-01-28 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the COVID shock, supervisors encouraged banks to use capital buffers to support the recovery. However, banks have been reluctant to do so. Provided the market expects a bank to rebuild its buffers, any draw-down will open up a capital shortfall that will weigh on its share price. Therefore, a bank will only decide to use its buffers if the value creation from a larger loan book offsets the costs associated with a capital shortfall. Using market expectations, we calibrate a framework for assessing the usability of buffers. Our results suggest that the cases in which the use of buffers make economic sense are rare in practice.