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Negative interest rates are the most honest signal yet of an unspoken market truth: central banks have formally ended the market-based system for credit allocation. Over the last seven years regulators have subsidized lending to targeted sectors – forcing bankers to allocate to favoured markets, clients and business models – and unleashed a flurry of edicts micro-managing banks’ assets and liabilities.
But a negative interest rate policy (Nirp) is a game-changer for the European banking industry. Some €8.7 trillion of eurozone deposits are approaching zero yield. Zero rates on retail deposits and low asset yields squeeze bank net interest margins and curb capital generation while capital requirements are rising.
In recent years, Nordic lenders have imposed extra premia to new lending business to offset margin pressure at the back-end of the loan book. This is not how the credit transmission channel is supposed to work.
In the eurozone, the banking system is struggling with a €1 trillion stock of bad debts, moribund credit demand, regulatory controls and a crisis of confidence in bank business models. Could negative rates prove not just counter-productive to Europe’s attempts at reflation, but the final straw for Europe’s already weakened lenders?
Many of the bankers interviewed by Euromoney believe it could be.