What is a Chartered Bank?

What happens if a perfectly "healthy" bank falls victim to rumors and a bank run begins?

  • This is a follow up question to This is what is happening nowadays in Bulgaria. The bank system has been in perfect shape since 1996. However, due to some political turbulence, some politically-influenced media attacked the bank system. This is illigal, but it is happening right now. People started to panic and everyone is withdrawing money. We are effectively in a bank run mode. The government and the Central Bank(CB) are admitting that there is an attack, and are saying that they are backing the whole system. However, Bulgaria operates under a currency board, which makes things more complicated. There still has not been a bank failure, however two of the biggest banks got closed because hundreds of millions were withdrawn withing a day. The CB says that it is going to reassess their assets and they would open doors as soon as possible. The panic is building up. What is the optimistic scenario if the banks are really well managed and have no excess of bad loans (which should be the case)? How can they pay out deposit and continue to function or if they fail, how does it not contaminate the whole system? So the question is, how does a perfectly healthy bank protect itself from a bank run when things get scary?

  • Answer:

    There's a rule in computer security that given enough stress any system can be broken, and the goal is to understand what that level is rather than to think that a system is safe.  The same goes true with banking. Given enough stress, *ANY* bank can be broken and can collapse, just as given enough stress, *ANY* bridge will collapse. Your job in dealing with risk is to know what that stress level is and set things up so that you can remove the stress before the bank collapses. In a good situation, the bank has enough reserves to stay afloat while the politicians figure out what to do.  The standard criterion for the amount of cash reserves that a bank has is 30 days.  If you can withdraw a mass withdraw for 30 days, that gives the government enough time to step in and figure out what to do.  In some countries, the government has the ability to just print money, and once you are in a situation where you are able to stop a run by printing money, that kills the run. Sometimes a bank holiday kills the run.  People are afraid because they are worried that other people will get to the bank before them.  Shutting down the bank, means that no one gets to their money, and it give you some time.  In a bad situation, a bank holiday makes things worse. Also, it's a dirty game.  You figure out in whose interest it is to collapse the system, and you do nasty things to them.  For example, during the Asian crisis, the HKMA at one point increased overnight interest rates to 1000+% in order warn off companies that were making money by the run.

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There have been several bank runs in countries with central banks, either for targeted banks or for entire banking systems. The most effective, if inconvenient, approach is the bank holiday. The central bank closes the banks for several days and reviews their books. Once that is done, the banks are either merged with stronger banks, bailed out, or reopen. By freezing everything in place during the bank holiday, the panic that is besetting depositors quiets down and people look at realistic concerns. Sometimes, as in Cyprus, there were real problems and shareholders where wiped out and large creditors, including large depositors, took a serious haircut. The problem with saying that a bank is solid is that it may be solid if there are no economic problems, but because they are so highly leveraged a small problem in the economy can become a huge problem for the bank. It is particularly problematic if the controlling shareholder of a bank has been using it to lend money to his other operations. In this particular case, it seems that the Bulgarian central bank should work with the ECB to quiet concerns. I don't know anything about deposit insurance in Bulgaria, but small depositors should be protected, no matter what happens.

David Jensen

From your question details it looks like the Central Bank is doing the right thing. Usually in these cases Central Banks impose blackout periods or "cool down" periods for unfounded panic to go away and to bring back reason into the game. During these periods, books are reviewed and quick stress tests are conducted, to assess the individual and systematic financial risks. Sometimes, cool down periods can be sufficient. But even with "serious" banks things can get ugly really quickly due to leverage, asset prices falling (because of selloffs) and reserves already low (because of withdrawals). The good side of leverage is that it is much more efficient to help and/or reorganize the stressed banks (even by "printing money") than to bail out depositors.

Jorge Ferrando

I'm not familiar with the Bulgarian system. In the US there have been bank failures due to large bank runs. Assuming the bank is healthy and how large the run is they should be able to recover by managing their balance sheet (deposit and loan portfolios). If the bank fails, or is in danger of doing so, then one of two things will happen:  they will be acquired by another bank that will manage it's assets, or if they are not acquired, the FDIC will pay depositors directly for the amount of their deposits they were insured. So, assuming that the loan portfolio is good (which you suggest) than if things get bad and the bank is going under, then there is a strong likelihood another financial institution will acquire the bank(s) in question. Or, your government might be willing to send/lend the institution money to assist with liquidity issues. If the bank is sound, other than the run, the government might see this as a safe and necessary way to keep the economy from declining (similar to what happened in 2008-09 in the US). However if the loan portfolio is bad then another bank may not want to acquire the assets. Then it's up to the government and their organization (FDIC in the US) to cover insured deposits. Deposits over the insured amount may not be paid and the customer may then lose money.

Brian Bosley

Bank runs should not be a problem in the USA.  The Federal Reserve exists primarily to prevent this problem.  Before creation of the fed, there were frequent panics where banks were attacked and ran out of money to pay depositors.  Today the fed would provide emergency cash to any member bank as needed to satisfy depositor demands for withdrawals. As we have seen for the last 6 years, there is no limit to the amount of money the fed can produce for this or any other purpose.  Through a program called quantitative easing it has produced trillions of dollars of previously nonexisting dollars and distributed these new dollars around the country in the hope of solving the problems created through the housing bubble.

Paul Mulwitz

First you got to understand that bank runs are problematic only because "healthy" banks also falls prey to them. banks that are not managed carefully or are piling up huge NPA's, are expected to fail eventually. if "healthy" banks not fall to banks runs then there is no need to worry about bank runs at all. Now, only thing that can safeguard a healthy bank from falling victim to bank runs is  confidence among public. bank runs are "self fulfilling", we expect a bank to go bank run , we withdraw all our money, hence bank actually goes bank run, fulfilling our own prophecy. I'm not aware of Bulgaria's banking regulations, but safety of all deposits in commercial banks are actually guaranteed by central bank. so if people believe in CB, then healthy banks will not suffer. So, Bulgaria's CB has to be credible enough. Credibility of course depends CB's past policies, and credibility of current top technocrats working in CB like Governor or chairman.

Gurmeet Heera

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