Does diversification improve the performance of German banks? Evidence from individual bank loan portfolios

Should banks be diversified or focused? Does diversification indeed lead to enhanced performance and, therefore, greater safety for banks, as traditional portfolio and banking theory would suggest? This paper investigates the link between banks? profitability (ROA) and their portfolio diversification across different industries, broader economic sectors and geographical regions measured by the Herfindahl Index. To explore this issue, we use a unique data set of the individual bank loan portfolios of 983 German banks for the period from 1996 to 2002. The overall evidence we provide shows that there are no large performance benefits associated with diversification since each type of diversification tends to reduce the banks? returns. Moreover, we find that the impact of diversification depends strongly on the risk level. However, it is only for moderate risk levels and in the case of industrial diversification that diversification significantly improves the banks? returns. --focus,diversification,monitoring,bank returns,bank risk

Creditor concentration: an empirical investigation

Most of the literature addressing multiple banking assumes equal financing shares. However, unequal, concentrated or asymmetric bank borrowing is widespread. This paper investigates the determinants of creditor concentration for German firms using a comprehensive bank-firm level dataset for the time period between 1993 and 2003. We document that lending is very often concentrated and, consequently, that relationship lending is important, not only for the small firms but also for the larger firms in our sample. However, we also find that risky, illiquid, large and leveraged firms spread their borrowing more evenly between multiple lenders. On the other hand, the degree of concentration increases with the profitability of the relationship lender. Relationship lending may spur financing provided by other banks, especially if the relationship lender is a public sector bank and if the other banks are large or do not have to tie up additional funds in capital. --bank relationships,asymmetric financing,banking competition

Heterogeneity in lending and sectoral growth: evidence from German bank-level data

This paper studies the sectoral and geographical dimensions of the response of bank lending to sectoral growth. We use several bank-level datasets provided by the Deutsche Bundesbank for the 1996-2002 period. Our results show that bank heterogeneity affects how lending responds to domestic sectoral growth. We document that banks? total lending to German firms reacts procyclically to domestic sectoral growth, while lending exceeding a threshold of ?1.5 million to German and foreign firms does not. Moreover, we find that the response of lending depends on bank characteristics such as the banking groups, the banks? asset size, and the degree of sectoral portfolio concentration. We find that total domestic lending by savings banks and credit cooperatives (including their regional institutions), smaller banks, and banks whose portfolios are heavily concentrated in specific sectors responds positively and, in relevant cases, more strongly to domestic sectoral growth. --bank lending,heterogeneity,sectoral growth

Do exposures to sagging real estate, subprime or conduits abroad lead to contraction and flight to quality in bank lending at home?

We investigate how differential exposures by German banks to the US real estate market affect domestic lending in Germany when home prices started to decline in the US. We find that banks with an exposure to the US real estate sector and to conduits shift their domestic lending to industry–region combinations with lower insolvency ratios following a decrease in US home prices. These banks also contract their lending to German firms more than banks that do not have such exposure. We mainly document that possible losses abroad shift bank lending at home where the size of the effect depends on the type and the degree of exposure the bank has

Fundamentals matter: Idiosyncratic shocks and interbank relations

Our results uncover a so far undocumented ability of the interbank market to distinguish between banks of different quality in times of aggregate distress. We show empirical evidence that during the 2007 financial crisis the inability of some banks to roll over their interbank debt was not due to a failure of the interbank market per se but rather to bankspecific shocks affecting banks' capital, liquidity and credit quality as well as revised banklevel risk perceptions. Relationship banking is not capable of containing these frictions, as hard information seems to dominate soft information. In detail, we explore determinants of the formation and resilience of interbank lending relationships by analyzing an extensive dataset comprising over 1.9 million interbank relationships of more than 3,500 German banks between 2000 and 2012

Does diversification improve the performance of German banks? Evidence from individual bank loan portfolios

Should banks be diversified or focused? Does diversification indeed lead to enhanced performance and, therefore, greater safety for banks, as traditional portfolio and banking theory would suggest? This paper investigates the link between banks? profitability (ROA) and their portfolio diversification across different industries, broader economic sectors and geographical regions measured by the Herfindahl Index. To explore this issue, we use a unique data set of the individual bank loan portfolios of 983 German banks for the period from 1996 to 2002. The overall evidence we provide shows that there are no large performance benefits associated with diversification since each type of diversification tends to reduce the banks? returns. Moreover, we find that the impact of diversification depends strongly on the risk level. However, it is only for moderate risk levels and in the case of industrial diversification that diversification significantly improves the banks? returns

M-PRESS-CreditRisk: A holistic micro- and macroprudential approach to capital requirements

M-PRESS-CreditRisk is a new top-down macro stress testing framework that can help supervisors gauge banks' capital adequacy related to credit risk. For the first time, it combines calibration of microprudential capital requirements and macroprudential buffers in a unified, coherent framework. Its core element is an advanced credit portfolio model - SystemicCreditRisk - built upon a rich, non-linear dependence structure for interconnected bank portfolios. Incorporating numerous sector/country-specific systematic factors, the model focuses on credit default concentration risk as a major source of large losses that may have systemic impact. A test run using a sample of 12 systemically important German banks provides measures for systemic credit risk and the banks' contributions to it in both baseline and stress scenarios. Capital requirements calibrated to the results combine elements of Pillar 1 and Pillar 2, whereas macroprudential buffers can internalize the system's tail risk. The maximum model-based combined requirements range between 6.3% and 27.2% of credit RWA depending on the bank. A comparison with the reported capital figures suggests that there appears to be enough capital in the banking system, but its distribution might be suboptimal from a systemic point of view as the capital level of a number of banks might need improvement

Does Diversification Improve the Performance of German Banks? Evidence from Individual Bank Loan Portfolios

Should banks be diversified or focused? Does diversification indeed lead to increased performance and therefore greater safety on the part of banks as traditional portfolio and banking theory would suggest? This paper investigates the link between banks’ profitability and their portfolio diversification across different industries, broader economic sectors and geographical regions. To explore this issue, we use a unique data set of the individual bank loan portfolios of 983 German banks for the period from 1996 to 2002. The overall evidence we provide shows that there are no large performance benefits associated with diversification since each type of diversification tends to reduce the banks’ returns. Additionally, we find that banks do not use diversification to operate at a constant level of risk-return efficiency, which implies that banks are not risk-return efficient. Moreover, we find that the impact of diversification strongly depends on the risk level. However, only for moderate risk levels and in the case of industrial diversification does diversification significantly improve the banks’ returns.focus, diversification, monitoring, bank returns, bank risk

Banks of a feather: The informational advantage of being alike

Banks lend more to banks that are similar to them. Using data from the German credit register and proprietary supervisory data on the quality of banks' loan portfolio, we show that a similar portfolio of the lending and borrowing bank helps to overcome information asymmetries in interbank markets. While interbank lenders generally do not adjust their lending to information on the counterparty's portfolio quality, banks with an exposure to similar industries and regions strongly react to this private information. Lending between similar banks is particularly important for borrowers with an opaque loan portfolio, which do not obtain credit from dissimilar peers

Effects of bank capital requirements on lending by banks and non-bank financial institutions

What is the impact of a sudden and sizeable increase in bank capital requirements on the lending activity by directly affected banks and by non-affected non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs)? To answer this question, we apply a difference-in-differences methodology around the capital exercise by the European Banking Authority (EBA) in 2011 with German credit register data. We find that insurance companies, financial enterprises, and factoring companies - but not leasing companies - and Non-EBA banks expand their corporate lending relative to EBA banks. In particular, NBFIs use the opportunity to expand their credit activities, in riskier and more competitive borrower segments, but NBFIs do not seem to rely on increased bank funding to finance this expansion