As I mentioned at the outset, the variations in capital requirements might run contrary to the intuition that the risk of loss of a given portfolio of assets is the same no matter who owns them. Of course, the direct explanation for the variations lies in part in institutional history, with different regulatory bodies having been given authority over different types of financial intermediaries.
Still, as we have seen, differences in the liability side of the balance sheet can in fact provide a good policy justification for having varying capital requirements among different types of financial intermediaries.