This post is the fourth in a series of six Liberty Street Economics posts on liquidity issues.
Liquidity transformation—funding longer-term assets with short-term liabilities—is one of the main functions that banks provide. However, this liquidity mismatch exposes banks to liquidity risk. This risk was clearly demonstrated in the 2008 financial crisis when banks’ funding liquidity dried up and their market liquidity evaporated. Since the crisis, liquidity risk management has become one of the top priorities for regulators, and new liquidity requirements, such as the Liquidity Coverage Ratio and the Net Stable Funding Ratio, have been proposed in Basel III, apart from conventional capital requirements. In this post, we present a new measure of liquidity mismatch—the liquidity stress ratio (LSR). We analyze how it has evolved for large banks, and study the correlation between the LSR and key bank characteristics over time.
Liquidity Stress Ratio
The LSR calculates the potential liquidity shortfall of an individual bank holding company (BHC), or aggregated BHCs, during a liquidity stress scenario, using publicly available data sources (Federal Reserve Reporting Forms FR Y-9C). The LSR consists of two parts: The numerator is the liquidity-adjusted sum of liabilities and off-balance-sheet exposures; the denominator consists of liquid assets subject to similar liquidity adjustments.
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Liquidity adjustments reflect the runoff risk of liabilities and the liquidity of assets. For the liquidity outflow exposures, the size of the liquidity adjustment is larger for liabilities with higher expected funding outflows during stress, while the liquidity adjustment for some assets is higher if they are expected to be more liquid during stress. Thus, a bank is more likely to experience severe liquidity problems if its liquidity stress ratio is higher. See the online appendix for liquidity adjustments used in the calculation of the LSR.
