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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | End hand-holding: Let banks grow up

End hand-holding: Let banks grow up

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published Published on Dec 9, 2009   modified Modified on Dec 9, 2009

The RBI has reason to be concerned. Banks’ exposure to mutual funds (MFs) has more than trebled, from Rs 45,000 crore to Rs 1,64,000 crore, during March-November 2009.

The RBI is worried that stock market volatility could impact banks and, hence, endanger financial stability. Hence, the overall cap on stock market exposure as part of macro-prudential regulation. Currently, the aggregate exposure of a bank to the capital markets in all forms (both fund-based and non-fund-based) is capped at 40% of its net worth at the end of the previous year, with direct exposure capped at 20%. However, the problem is that while investment in equity-oriented MFs is included within the direct exposure limit, investment in exclusively debt-oriented MFs is not.

Hence, faced with the prospect of ever-larger sums of bank funds being invested in MFs, the RBI is reportedly toying with the idea of doing what it does best: laying down some more rules! It is contemplating bringing investment debt MFs within a separate overall cap for MFs.

On paper, this might seem a good way of saving banks from their own folly. Except that there is a limit to how far the RBI can do this. For one, funds are fungible and if banks wish, they can always find ways to circumvent the tightest of regulations.

For instance, there is nothing to prevent a corporate from borrowing from a bank and using the funds to invest in the stock market. In practice, it is next to impossible to monitor the end-use of funds. It would, therefore, be far better for the RBI to caution banks of the dangers of excess stock market exposure, monitor their position through periodic inspection/feedback, and pull up those banks that it feels are excessively exposed rather than lay down even more strictures in a system that is already enormously rule-bound.

As long as the RBI continues to micro-manage banks, it is unlikely bank boards will ever play the role expected of them. Beyond that, the RBI would do well to examine whether banks’ growing investment in MFs is symptomatic of a graver macro-economic disequilibrium: excess liquidity in the system. 


The Economic Times, 10 December, 2009, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/End-hand-holding-Let-banks-grow-up/articleshow/5320851.cms
 

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