Funding liquidity risk and fund transfer pricing in banking

Abstract

Funding liquidity risk was one of the main reasons for bank failure during the global financial crisis in 2007-2008. New legislation has been released in the form of Basel III, in particular the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), to strengthen the liquidity requirements for banks; this makes funding liquidity a very important topic for banks. In this thesis, I will study the important factors that need to be taken into consideration when dealing with liquidity risk and how a bank can manage their funding liquidity risk. A key concept used in banks is Fund Transfer Pricing (FTP). This approach helps the banks to manage their interest rate risk. I will investigate how funding liquidity risk can be incorporated into this framework. It is important that this approach will still maximise the bank's overall profits. In order to achieve this I will initially evaluate a one time period model. This shows whether the bank's overall profits can be optimised using FTP. My results show that it is possible to allow each business unit to work independently and that, by using FTP, individual business units can be optimised consistently with the bank's overall profits. However, for this to occur, it is important to decide whether a bank is deposit rich or deposit poor as an incorrect assumption will lead to sub-optimal profits for the bank. Banks work in more than 1 time period; therefore, I will assess how the model can be extended and how FTP would work over multiple time periods. One major consideration is to account for the uncertainty regarding the timing of cash flows. This is because customers often have the option to prepay loans or withdraw their deposits. I will investigate an approach for calculating the cost of these options and how this can be included in the FTP framework. By applying a cost to the uncertainty, we can insure that the business units are incentivised in the correct way while still maximising the profits of the bank. Under my approach the treasury unit will be exposed to actual events in return for receiving a fair value for the cost of the option. The business units will be charged the cost of the option. There is potential for one party to act in their own interest by changing the value of the option. However, as both parties need to agree, this risk should be removed over time. I have shown how this can be done over 2 time periods but further research is needed to investigate over more time periods.