Reserve Bank of Australia
Topic: Finance
Transactional Banking at the RBA in Extraordinary Times
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is the banker to the Commonwealth of Australia, supporting the Australian Government in its daily banking needs. During extraordinary times, such as the bushfires of the 2019/20 summer season or the current COVID-19 pandemic, demands on banking services are heightened as additional payments are made to Australians who require funds immediately. By modernising its products and service offerings and the underlying technology, the RBA has ensured payment and banking systems are fit to perform these tasks securely and reliably. In the past, additional payments during extraordinary times required additional effort and at times unconventional means. Today, government payments can be made seamlessly, even during crisis situations, ensuring funds are received without unnecessary delays.
Developments in Banks' Funding Costs and Lending Rates
Banks’ funding costs declined over 2019, driven by reductions in the cash rate. Lenders passed most of the decrease in funding costs through to interest rates on mortgages and business loans. Funding costs and lending rates are at historical lows.
The Road to Australian Dollar Funding
A key feature of Australia’s financial system is that nearly all liabilities are denominated in, or hedged into, Australian dollars. A pre-condition for this state of affairs is that investors are willing to hold Australian dollar-denominated assets. Investor confidence in Australian dollar assets is supported by Australia’s sound institutional framework, history of positive macroeconomic outcomes, and well-functioning financial system. Australia’s journey to funding in its own currency spanned nearly a century and involved various costs. Today, these funding arrangements confer substantial benefits to the Australian economy, including by reinforcing the same positive economic, financial and institutional outcomes that made Australian dollar funding possible in the first place.
Developments in Foreign Exchange and Over-the-counter Derivatives Markets
Global activity in foreign exchange (FX) and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives markets
increased over the three years to April 2019.
Continuing a trend observed over prior years,
growth in turnover of foreign exchange derivatives outpaced growth in spot market activity.
Trading between dealers and other financial institutions accounted for a larger share of
market activity than trading between FX dealers.
The Australian dollar remained the fifth most traded currency globally, although the volume of FX
trading activity in the Australian market was little changed. Over the past three years, the growth of
global and Australian OTC derivatives markets has been driven by interest rate derivatives.
Bank Balance Sheet Constraints and Money Market Divergence
The spread between key Australian money market interest rates has widened and become more volatile in recent years. While this might seem to imply scope to profit from arbitrage – by borrowing at a low rate to invest at a higher one – banks have additional balance sheet considerations that need to be taken into account. We find that money market trades have generally not been profitable for the four major banks since the financial crisis. This is partly because debt funding costs have fallen by less than money market returns. In addition, equity funding, which is more expensive than debt, has increased. Consequently, the incentive for banks to arbitrage between money market interest rates has fallen. We also note that banks tend to prefer more profitable lines of business, such as lending for residential housing, over the narrow margins implied by money market arbitrage.
The Committed Liquidity Facility
The Reserve Bank provides the Committed Liquidity Facility (CLF) as part of global reforms to improve the resilience of the banking system. The CLF is required due to the low level of government debt in Australia. This limits the amount of high-quality liquid assets that financial institutions can reasonably hold as a buffer against periods of stress. Under the CLF, the Reserve Bank commits to providing a set amount of liquidity to institutions, subject to them satisfying several conditions. These include having paid a fee on the committed amount. No financial institution has needed to draw upon the CLF in response to a period of financial stress.
The Australian Equity Market over the Past Century
This article describes developments in the Australian equity market over the past century, drawing in part from a newly compiled historical dataset which begins in 1917. Over the past one hundred years, the market has increased in size relative to the economy, while its composition by industry also changed substantially. The data also provide new evidence that historical returns on Australian equities – and therefore the equity risk premium – are lower than previously thought.
Developments in Banks' Funding Costs and Lending Rates
Banks' funding costs increased a little over 2018, driven by a rise in the cost of wholesale funding linked to money market rates, but with some offset from reductions in the cost of retail deposits. Most lenders passed the increase in funding costs through to their lending rates, including for mortgages. Nevertheless, funding costs and lending rates remain low by historical standards.
Updates to Australia's Financial Aggregates
The financial aggregates for Australia are important data compiled by the Reserve Bank that are used by policymakers to assess financial and economic activity of households and companies. From August 2019, the Reserve Bank will publish the financial aggregates using an improved framework based on a better data collection. This will enhance the quality of information available to policymakers and the wider community. This article gives an overview of the main changes.
The Reserve Bank's Securitisation Dataset
The Reserve Bank's Securitisation Dataset contains timely and detailed data on each and every one of the mortgages underlying Australian residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS). This dataset allows the Bank to better analyse the structure of, and monitor developments in, the mortgage market. In order to examine how representative the dataset is of the wider mortgage market we compare the dataset to less frequent but more comprehensive data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). We find that the Securitisation Dataset provides excellent coverage of the collateral underpinning the RMBS market, and is representative of the wider Australian mortgage market across a number of dimensions. We then use these data to explore trends in mortgage interest rates.
A Forward-looking Model of the Australian Dollar
The exchange rate is an important mechanism that helps the economy adjust to external shocks.This article analyses the key determinants of the Australian dollar – the terms of trade and differences between interest rates in Australia and other advanced economies. It emphasises that ‘forward-looking’ measures of these determinants are important for capturing movements of the observed real exchange rate. In particular, they capture longer-term movements in the real exchange rate, including around key turning points, for instance during the global financial crisis.
Understanding Exchange Rates and Why They Are Important
Exchange rates are important to Australia's economy because they affect trade and financial flows between Australia and other countries. They also affect how the Reserve Bank conducts monetary policy. This article outlines how exchange rates are measured, the different types of exchange rate regimes, the factors that influence the exchange rate and how changes in the exchange rate affect the economy.
Money in the Australian Economy
Money forms part of our everyday lives and is integral to the smooth functioning of the financial system and the real economy; however, discussions of what money is and how it is created are generally left to economics textbooks. This article provides an introduction to the concept of money and describes how it is created and measured. We also discuss what these measures can tell us about economic activity.
Interest Rate Benchmarks for the Australian Dollar
Interest rate benchmarks are widely relied upon in global financial markets. They are referenced in contracts for derivatives, loans and securities. They are also used by market participants to value financial instruments, and by investment funds as benchmarks for assessing their performance. The key interest rate benchmarks for the Australian dollar are the bank bill swap rates (BBSW) and the cash rate. This article provides an overview of these benchmarks, and the reforms that have been undertaken over recent years to make them more robust.
The Australian OTC Derivatives Market: Insights from New Trade Repository Data
Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives have played a significant role in episodes of financial stress, including the global financial crisis. However, because these derivatives are not traded on exchanges, detailed information about them has not generally been available. Newly available trade-level data coming from trade repositories can now facilitate a closer look at these markets than was possible before. This article focusses on OTC interest rate derivatives. Central counterparties (CCPs) have become much more important, in large part because of G20 reforms to increase the central clearing of OTC derivatives. Nonetheless, Australian banks still have significant exposures to other counterparties, including foreign banks. In aggregate, Australian banks hold a variety of offsetting single-currency interest rate derivatives, and use cross-currency swaps to hedge exchange rate risks.
Developments in Banks' Funding Costs and Lending Rates
This article updates previous Reserve Bank research on the composition and pricing of banks' debt funding and lending rates. The major banks' debt funding costs declined a little over 2017, primarily driven by a decline in the cost of deposits. Over the same period, overall lending rates were little changed, with higher household lending rates partly offset by lower business lending rates.
The graphs in the Bulletin were generated using Mathematica.
ISSN 1837-7211 (Online)