This “hot potato effect” also extends to bank loans, which was the second objective of lowering rates into negative territory. With the start of negative rates, we have observed a steady increase in the growth rate of loans extended by euro area monetary financial institutions (Chart 4).
An ECB meta-analysis of various studies corroborates the view that the use of the NIRP had a positive impact on loan growth. [6] The analysis shows that, since the start of the NIRP regime in mid-2014, the growth of loans extended to non-financial corporations (NFCs) would have been lower in the vast majority of counterfactual scenarios of non-negative policy rates (Chart 5).