Abstract
This chapter analyzes the effect of the monetary policy on both net interest margin and bank profitability using a panel data from 31 OECD countries over the period 2000–2017. The main results show that expansionary monetary policy measures adopted in numerous economies had a negative impact on net interest margins and, therefore, on bank profitability. The relationship between interest rates and the slope of the yield curve with both the net interest margin and profitability is non-linear, more specifically concave. This suggests that the negative impact of low interest rates and the flat yield curve is greater the lower and flattened they are, respectively. Therefore, a potential normalization of monetary policy would have highly beneficial effects on restoring margins and profitability.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Some papers find that monetary policy is less effective in stimulating credit growth when interest rates are very low (Borio and Gambacorta 2017), and other studies even find that negative interest rates have a contracting effect on the credit supply (Heider et al. 2018; Brunnermeier and Koby 2018). The paper of Arce et al. (2018) suggests that there is no significant difference between the volume of credit offered by banks affected or not by negative interest rates.
- 2.
Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Colombia, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovak Republic, United States and South Africa.
- 3.
As there are no data in the databases used about the number of employees for the entire sample, the ratio of staff cost to total assets as a proxy for the price of labor has been used, instead of the ratio of staff cost to number of employees.
- 4.
Note that the cost function differs from the traditional one in that it includes, in addition to the financial and operational costs, the provisions that a bank sets aside each year (as a proxy ex-post of the cost of risk). Given that the cost is included in the dependent variable, it has been necessary to include the unit cost of this productive input that we can call “risk” as a determinant, approximating as a ratio between financial asset impairment losses and the volume of lending.
- 5.
Note that this ratio is a measure of capitalization and presents limitations as a measure of risk aversion, since it includes the minimum capital required by the regulation. However, unfortunately, there is no better proxy for this variable.
- 6.
Unfortunately, the interest rates for Japan between 2000 and 2002 are not available.
References
Ahtik, M., B. Banerjee, and F. Remsak. 2016. Net Interest Margin in a Low Interest Rate Environment: Evidence for Slovenia. The Journal for Money and Banking 65 (11): 77–89.
Albertazzi, U., and L. Gambacorta. 2009. Bank Profitability and the Business Cycle. Journal of Financial Stability 5 (4): 393–409.
Albertazzi, U., M. Boucinha, and B. Becker. 2018. Portfolio Rebalancing and the Transmission of Large-Scale Asset Programmes: Evidence From the Euro Area. ECB Working Paper, 2125.
Alessandri, P., and B. Nelson. 2015. Simple Banking: Profitability and the Yield Curve. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 47 (1): 143–175.
Altavilla, C., M. Boucinha, and J.-L. Peydró. 2018. Monetary Policy and Bank Profitability in a Low Interest Rate Environment. Economic Policy 33 (96): 531–586.
Angbazo, L. 1997. Commercial Bank Net Interest Margins, Default Risk, Interest-rate risk and Off-balance Sheet Banking. Journal of Banking and Finance 21: 55–87.
Angori, G., D. Aristei, and M. Gallo. 2019. Determinants of Banks’ Net Interest Margin: Evidence from the Euro Area During the Crisis and Post-crisis Period. Sustainability 11 (14): 1–20.
Arce, O., M. García-Posada, S. Mayordomo, and S. Ongena. 2018. Adapting Lending Policies When Negative Interest Rates Hit Banks’ Profits. Bank of Spain Working Paper, 1832.
Arellano, M., and S. Bond. 1991. Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations. Review of Economic Studies 58: 277–297.
Arellano, M., and O. Bover. 1995. Another Look at the Instrumental-variable Estimation of Error-component Models. Journal of Econometrics 68 (1): 29–51.
Aydemir, R., and G. Ovenc. 2016. Interest Rates, the Yield Curve and Bank Profitability in an Emerging Market Economy. Economic System 40: 670–682.
Bikker, J.A., and T.M. Vervliet. 2018. Bank Profitability and Risk-taking Under Low Interest Rates. International Journal of Finance & Economics 23 (1): 3–18.
Blundell, R., and S. Bond. 1998. Initial Conditions and Moment Restrictions in Dynamic Panel Data Models. Journal of Econometrics 87 (1): 115–143.
Borio, C., and L. Gambacorta. 2017. Monetary Policy and Bank Lending in a Low Interest Rate Environment: Diminishing Effectiveness? Journal of Macroeconomics 54: 217–231.
Borio, C., L. Gambacorta, and B. Hofmann. 2017. The Influence of Monetary Policy on Bank Profitability. International Finance 20: 48–63.
Brunnermeier, M.K., and Y. Koby. 2018. The Reversal Interest Rate. NBER Working Paper, 25406.
Busch, R., and C. Memmel. 2015. Banks’ Net Interest Margin and the Level of Interest Rates. Discussion Paper 16/2015, Deutsche Bundesbank Centre.
Claessens, S., N. Coleman, and M. Donnelly. 2018. Low-for-Long Interest Rates and Banks’ Interest Margins and Profitability: Cross-country Evidence. Journal of Financial Intermediation 35: 1–16.
Cruz-García, P., J. Fernández de Guevara, and J. Maudos. 2018. Banking Concentration and Competition in Spain: The Impact of the Crisis and Restructuring. Financial Stability Review 34: 57–76.
———. 2019. Determinants of Bank’s Interest Margin in the Aftermath of the Crisis: The Effect of Interest Rates and the Yield Curve Slope. Empirical Economics 56: 341–365.
Demiralp, S., J. Eisenschmidt, and T. Vlassopoulos. 2019. Negative Interest Rates, Excess Liquidity and Retail Deposits: Banks’ Reaction to Unconventional Monetary Policy in the Euro Area. ECB Working Paper, 2283.
English, W.B. 2002. Interest Rate Risk and Bank Net Interest Margins. BIS Quarterly Review, December, 67–82.
Entrop, O., C. Memmel, B. Ruprecht, and M. Wilkens. 2015. Determinants of Bank Interest Margins: Impact of Maturity Transformation. Journal of Banking & Finance 54: 1–19.
Genay, H., and R. Podjasek. 2014. What is the Impact of a Low Interest Rate Environment on Bank Profitability? Chicago Fed Letter 324: 1–4.
Heider, F., F. Saidi, and G. Schepens. 2018. Life Below Zero: Bank Lending Under Negative Policy Rates. ECB Working Paper, 2173.
International Money Fund. 2016. Global Financial Stability Report, April.
Kohlscheen, E., A. Murcia, and J. Contreras. 2018. Determinants of Bank Profitability in Emerging Markets. BIS Working Papers n° 686. January.
Mamatzakis, E., and T. Bermpei. 2016. What is the Effect of Unconventional Monetary Policy on Bank Performance? Journal of International Money and Finance 67: 239–263.
Maudos, J., and J. Fernández de Guevara. 2004. Factors Explaining the Interest Margin in the Banking Sectors of the European Union. Journal of Banking & Finance 28 (9): 2259–2281.
McShane, R.W., and I.G. Sharpe. 1985. A Time Series/Cross Section Analysis of the Determinants of Australian Trading Bank Loan/Deposit Interest Margins: 1962–1981. Journal of Banking & Finance 9: 115–136.
Molyneux, P., A. Reghezza, and R. Xie. 2019. Bank Margins and Profits in a World of Negative Rates. Journal of Banking & Finance 107: 105613.
Pérez, C., and A. Ferrer. 2018. The Impact of the Interest Rate Level on Bank Profitability and Balance Sheet Structure. Review of Financial Stability 35: 123–152.
Rostagno, M., U. Bindseil, A. Kamps, W. Lemke, T. Sugo, and F. Vlassopoulos. 2016. Breaking Through the Zero Line: The ECB’s Negative Interest Rate Policy. In Presentation at Brookings Institutions, Washington, DC, June 6.
Sääskilahti, J. 2018. Retail Bank Interest Margin in Low Interest Rate Environments. Journal of Financial Services Research 53 (1): 37–68.
Scheiber, T., M. Silgoner, and C. Stern. 2016. The Development of Bank Profitability in Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland during a Period of Ultra-low and Negative Interest Rates. Focus on European Economic Integration, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), 3, 8–28.
Turk Ariss, R.. 2016. Negative Interest Rates: How Big a Challenge for Large Danish and Swedish Banks? IMF Working Paper, 16/198.
Weistroffer, C. 2013. Ultra-low Interest Rates: How Japanese Banks have Coped. Deutsche Bank Research, June 10.
Acknowledgments
I am gratefully acknowledge financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (research project ECO2017-84858-R) and Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU2014/00936).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cruz-García, P. (2020). The Impact of Monetary Policy on Bank Profitability. In: Cruciani, C., Gardenal, G., Cavezzali, E. (eds) Banking and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Banking and Financial Institutions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45752-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45752-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45751-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45752-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)