Systemic risk in the banking system: measuring and interpreting the results

Abstract

Highly concentrated banking system risks and the cumulative effect due to their accumulation act as a driver for improving the macro-prudential policy implemented by central banks. For this reason, an effectively and comprehensively assessed systemic risk in the banking system is declared an express condition for the early detection of its production sources and blocking of potential spreading channels, reducing the possible implementation. In light of this, the article develops an approach to the aggregated systemic risk assessment and interpretation of its results. The proposed approach is based on the considered influence exerted by financial risks of systemically important banks on the destabilized banking system and interconnections between banks in the context of the possible crisis impulse spreading. The following steps should be accomplished to form an aggregated systemic risk indicator in the banking system. Firstly, the differentiation of systemically important banks by the degree of their systemic importance; secondly, an integral assessment of the bank operation riskiness within certain bank groups; thirdly, the cumulative composition of the corresponding integral indicators, taking into account their weighting coefficients based on two criteria, namely values of the systemic importance indicator differentiating the bank groups, and the correlation of their risks. Interpreting the quantitative measurement results with regard to the systemic risk in the banking system is followed by the recommendations below: the systemic risk grading into high, medium and low levels and the respective definition of the threshold aggregated systemic risk indicator value which informs about the possible systemic crisis when approached; justification of the selected supervision regime types (strengthened, moderate or weakened) for systemically important banks, depending on the riskiness level specific for their operation and the systemic importance degree. The developed approach to measuring the systemic risk by means of constructing an aggregated indicator and interpreting the obtained results was being tested considering the financial risk indicators of the systemically important banks in Ukraine during 2009–2018.