There are structural vulnerabilities in the financial system caused by both of these problems in the non-bank world. And the dash for cash episode was the sort of stress event that nearly caused the problems to crystallise in a big way, and arguably would have done so but for the rapid intervention on a substantial scale by the authorities. Lessons from the March 2020 “dash for cash” episode Let me put this into the context of the role of money market funds and what happened during the dash for cash. I will describe the events using evidence from sterling money markets, and then draw on some broader evidence (the UK story is very well described and assessed in Hauser (2020)). The dash for cash was, of course, a broader financial system – and indeed economy wide – phenomenon, driven by the underlying health shock and its economic implications. Nonetheless, money market funds are an important part of the dash for cash story because they seek to bridge between the desire of investors for immediate liquidity (in other words a cash or depositlike desire) and the desire of the banks, in which they invest a sizeable part of the funds, for term funding in the form of commercial paper or certificates of deposit. They are therefore carrying out a form of maturity transformation which in times of stress can become prone to runs.
I will set out each of them, and then discuss the issues that arise from them. First, we should remove the adverse incentives introduced by the liquidity thresholds related to the use of suspensions, gates and redemption fees. Second, we should simplify the landscape to make clearer the critical distinction between cash-like funds and investment funds. We should remove the ambiguity of intermediate descriptions such as low volatility funds. Third, and to support removing the ambiguity, it will be important to define in an accounting and substantive sense more explicitly what constitutes cash-like. Current guidance leaves a lot of judgement to managers and auditors to make these decisions on a fund by fund basis1. Money-market funds are a cash management instrument, so it may seem odd that the meaning of cash-like as a term has not been well defined. The resultant ambiguity may have seemed convenient as a means to stretch the boundary of the definition to allow less liquid instruments in, but when a stress event like the dash for cash happens, the flaw is badly exposed and financial stability is in jeopardy. The authorities then have to intervene in scale to restore well-functioning markets, but that should not be the accepted way to run the system. 4/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  That said, the definition of cash-like therefore needs to be clear and appropriate rather than overprescriptive. For many purposes it does need to provide near instant access to cash – i.e.