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The EBA EU-Wide Stress Test 2016

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The EBA EU-Wide Stress Test 2016

Deciphering the Black Box

CEPS,

5 min read
5 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Bank stress tests fail to gauge the overall soundness of Europe’s banking sector.

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Analytical
  • Innovative

Recommendation

European banks are diverse and engage in different forms of risk-taking, so assessing their fundamental stability is no easy task. Researcher Willem Pieter De Groen finds that the current European Banking Authority stress test offers greater insights into existing problems, such as nonperforming loans and corporate and government debt exposures, than into banks’ underlying soundness and risk resilience. getAbstract recommends this scholarly analysis – written more for the banker, economist and regulator than the layperson – for its cogent arguments in favor of a more robust methodology for bank stress testing.

Summary

According to the July 2016 outcomes of a biannual stress test administered by the European Banking Authority (EBA) to 51 European bank groups, a wide disparity exists in banks’ ability to weather certain economic and financial shocks. On average, the “fully loaded common equity tier 1” capital of the banks tested could decline by 3.4% over three years, based on an unfavorable scenario. But the Italian Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, because of the level of its nonperforming loans (NPLs), would lose 14.5%, while the Norwegian bank DNB would cede less than 0.1%.

About the Author

Willem Pieter De Groen is a research fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies.


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