Article 03.16.23
Article
Article
04.14.23
The first quarter of 2023 was the most tumultuous for the banking industry since the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020.
On Friday, March 10, 2023, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was appointed receiver of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in California. SVB was the 15th largest bank in the United States with approximately $210 billion in assets. It claimed to have banking relationships with nearly half of the venture-backed technology and life sciences companies in the United States.
On March 12, 2023, regulators closed Signature Bank (SB), appointing the FDIC as receiver. SB, based in New York, focused on middle market companies, but was especially known for catering to law firms, real estate market participants and cryptocurrency companies. SB, at year-end 2022, had total assets of approximately $110 billion. It has been reported that approximately 30% of SB’s deposits were attributable to its cryptocurrency business.
The SVB and SB failures were the second and third largest bank failures in U.S. history (after the failure of Washington Mutual in 2008).
Both the SVB and SB failures resulted from a classic “run on the bank” scenario with large amounts of uninsured deposits being withdrawn in an extremely short period of time, coupled with substantial losses in the banks’ investment securities portfolio arising from the sustained period of inflation and the Federal Reserve’s program of increased interest rates as it has sought to quell inflation. By one estimate, as a result of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive stance on interest rate increases, the banking industry had some $620 billion in unrealized losses in the securities portfolio at the end of 2022.
Also on March 12, 2023, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the FDIC jointly approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolutions of the two failed banks on a basis that they would “make whole” all depositors of the failed banks (both insured and uninsured). The Federal Reserve also announced on the same day the creation of a Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) to provide liquidity to eligible financial institutions in the U.S. (essentially those banks in satisfactory condition who are eligible to make short-term borrowings from the Reserve Banks; see 12 CFR Section 201.4(a)). The Federal Reserve, under the BTFP, is giving a 100% advance rate on eligible collateral. In other words, the collateral will be valued at par and not marked to market. As of April 2023, it is estimated that borrowings by banks under the BTFP have exceeded $64 billion. In addition, banks had borrowed some $88 billion from the Federal Reserve discount window.
Losses to the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund (the DIF) from the two bank failures have been estimated at over $22 billion.
In the weeks following their failure, portions of the business and operations of the two failed banks were absorbed by other banks in transactions assisted by the government.
This paper comments on: the outlook for the U.S. banking sector in the aftermath of these bank failures; possible regulatory and legislative responses to the current situation; and lessons learned for customers and management of U.S. banks, including possible approaches to dealing with the liability and asset mismatch challenges facing the U.S. banking sector.
Outlook For the U.S. Banking Sector
As of this writing, the U.S. government’s response to the SVB and SB failures appears to have calmed financial markets. Nevertheless, in March 2023, following the SVB and SB failures and related events, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded its view of the entire U.S. banking system to negative from stable. Moody’s cited a “rapidly deteriorating operating environment” despite regulators’ efforts to support the industry. Moody’s also warned that it either was downgrading or placing on review for downgrade seven individual institutions. Moody’s stated: “Banks with substantial unrealized securities losses and with nonretail and uninsured U.S. depositors may still be more sensitive to depositor competition or ultimate flight, with adverse effects on funding, liquidity, earnings and capital.”
In the immediate aftermath of the SVB and SB failures, according to data published by the Federal Reserve, smaller U.S. banks lost nearly $200 billion in deposits in the week ending March 15, 2023. More recent data from the Federal Reserve showed that customer deposits at smaller banks appear to have stabilized, totaling $5.39 trillion in the week ending March 22, almost matching the $5.38 trillion in the prior week. Deposit outflows from the banking system as a whole, however, have continued. The Wall Street Journal reported that, as of April 5, 2023, some $2.2 trillion was lodged in the Federal Reserve’s reverse repurchase, or repo, facility. It also reported that bank deposits had dropped $363 billion, to $17.3 trillion, since the beginning of March 2023, with assets in money market funds increasing $304 billion to a record $5.2 trillion. Some 40% of money market fund assets are invested in the Federal Reserve’s reverse repo facility.
Nonetheless, the seeds of continuing challenges to the banking sector may well have been sown by recent events. In the past, challenges to the banking sector only became crises over a period of years. For example, from 1980 to 1994, approximately 3,000 financial institutions in the United States were closed or taken over (mostly smaller banks and many savings and loan institutions).
As compared with prior crises where the quality of bank loan assets was the main problem, the current environment focuses on the mismatch between the duration of the investment securities portfolio and the liability side of the balance sheet.
Another source of potential volatility for banks is the growing prevalence of smartphone banking applications and social media. While online banking has been available for quite a few years, the share of bank customers who use internet or mobile banking has increased from 52% in 2017 to about 66% in 2021, according to the FDIC. In the case of SVB, it has been widely reported that the deposit flight was spurred by commentary on social media and online communications within the tight-knit Silicon Valley technology and venture capital community. It should also be noted that later in 2023 the Federal Reserve is expected to roll out its new FedNow Service which is described as a new around the clock service through which businesses and individuals can send and receive instant payments in real time. This service might increase the risks for banks experiencing liquidity pressures.
What are the implications of these developments for the banking industry as a whole? The following are possibilities:
As a “bottom line” conclusion, these challenges to the industry may well result in much less tolerance for risk on the asset side of the balance sheet, as well as greatly increased scrutiny on the liability side; the implication is clearly for pressure on overall profitability of the U.S. banking system.
Possible Legislative or Regulatory Responses
It is too early to be certain about the range of responses by the U.S. Congress or the bank regulators to the current challenges faced by the banking industry. But a number of possible responses are already emerging.
On March 30, 2023, the White House issued a “Fact Sheet” on the crisis suggesting a number of actions, including: reinstating various rules that formerly applied to banks with more than $100 billion in assets, namely enhanced liquidity requirements and stress testing, annual supervisory capital stress tests, “living wills” for the resolution of the bank in a failure, increased capital levels and expanding long-term debt requirements for a broader range of banks. The White House paper did state that community banks should not have to pay increased FDIC insurance premiums. Another subject mentioned was the completion of the executive compensation rule for bank executives authorized under Section 956 of the Dodd-Frank Act (to prohibit incentive compensation arrangements that encourage inappropriate risk-taking at covered financial institutions). The White House Fact Sheet in a number of places lays blame for the failures on the previous administration, although the 2018 legislation referred to was passed by Congress on a bi-partisan basis. Senator Tim Scott, the leading Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, stated: “Here are the real facts. The bank executives at these banks failed to manage their risk, the regulators failed to supervise these banks, and the Biden administration failed to stop its reckless spending and curb inflation. The regulators had the tools to supervise these banks, but they were asleep at the wheel.”
On March 18, 2023, an organization called the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America sent a letter to the federal bank regulators arguing that a temporary suspension of the FDIC deposit insurance limit is necessary to “halt the exodus of deposits from smaller banks.” Whether the political will to do so can be mustered is unclear (legislation would be required).
Another alternative to the deposit insurance limit would be to institute, by legislation, an increase in the coverage level to, say, $1,000,000 for some period. This would appear to quell concerns about the deposits of most small- and medium-sized businesses.
Former FDIC chairman William Isaac observed that, rather than affording coverage to all the uninsured deposits at SVB and SB, the FDIC could have returned to its 1982 approach (called the modified deposit payoff) under which the FDIC would pay uninsured depositors the full insured amount of $250,000 and would issue receivership certificates for 80% of the uninsured funds, which was the approximate amount historically recovered from failed bank receiverships. The certificates could be tendered to the Federal Reserve Banks for cash. If the FDIC ultimately recovered more than 80%, it would remit the extra funds to the large depositors. The government’s announcement of the closure of SVB did mention the issue of receivership certificates to uninsured depositors, but the amount was unspecified and the issue became moot when full coverage was afforded.
Others have suggested that enhanced “claw back” rules on bank executive compensation should be adopted with respect to banks that fail—e.g., clawing back bonuses, etc., if the bank fails within two years.
Lessons Learned—Bank Customers
The SVB and SB failures exposed many customers of both banks to potentially severe losses on the uninsured portion of their deposits. As discussed above, the federal government, determining that a systemic risk was presented by the two bank failures, determined to make whole not only the insured deposits, but the uninsured deposits as well. However, the uncertainty generated by the two bank failures has brought into sharp focus the need for bank customers with substantial deposits to manage the risk of bank failure. There are a variety of measures which bank depositors may pursue to remediate the risk of exposure in a bank failure (the Secretary of the Treasury having made clear that not all bank failures will result in full protection for the uninsured depositors). These measures include the following:
Under most external sweep arrangements, the bank acts as agent of the customer relative to the mutual fund and the customer cannot practically deal directly with the mutual fund. Recovery of funds from the money market mutual fund, of course, is subject to its continuing solvency and liquidity. To ascertain a customer’s rights in respect to sweep accounts, careful review of the underlying account documentation is critical.
Lessons Learned—Banking Industry
The Federal Reserve’s most recent interest rate increase of only 25 basis points suggests that the Federal Reserve believes that inflationary pressures are easing. Whether this comes to pass in the remainder of 2023 and beyond remains to be seen. Bank management and boards of directors would be advised to consider a variety of measures to address the uncertainties arising from the current economic climate. Measures which might be considered include the following:
It can be expected that the banking sector will continue to see challenges and changes during the balance of 2023. Bank customers, management and boards will need to exercise continued vigilance as matters evolve.
The authors gratefully acknowledges the contribution of David I. Matson to this paper. Matson served as CFO of MUFG Union Bank, N.A., and as a director of several community banks.
Pillsbury’s 2023 banking crisis team includes the authors—Rodney R. Peck (San Francisco and New York), Andrew Troop (New York) and Patricia Young (San Francisco)—as well as Deborah Thoren-Peden (Los Angeles) and Brian H. Montgomery (New York).
Chinese version: 2023 年银行业危机：美国银行业前景、可能的监管和立法应对措
施、对于银行客户和管理层的经验教训