The level of the countercyclical capital buffers will be determined  6  This refers to Core Tier 1 capital in relation to risk-weighted assets. 7  FSB (2011), “Policy Measures to Address Systemically Important Financial Institutions”, 4 November 2011. 8  See, for example, Financial Stability Report 2012:1, Sveriges Riksbank. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  by the relevant authorities on the basis of quantitative and qualitative assessments. Among other data, the quantitative assessment will take into account the so-called credit gap, which is how far credit growth deviates from an estimated trend. But this is a fairly rough measure of the degree of risk in the system, and other measures and assessments may also be fairly important. The aim of the countercyclical capital buffers is primarily to strengthen the banks and the resilience of the financial system. One effect of introducing the buffers will be to moderate the fluctuations of the credit cycle. In an upturn, substantial credit expansion will activate the buffers, which means that the banks will gradually have to hold more capital. This will restrict lending and thus reduce the risk of exaggerated credit growth and rising asset prices. In a situation in which lending is being tightened, the banks’ capital will be freed up as the buffer requirement is reduced. The banks will therefore not need to reduce their lending to the same extent, which would otherwise reinforce the downturn.
This picture is broadly mirrored when turning from returns to labour to returns to capital. In the 1950s gross profitability of the financial sector relative to capital employed was broadly in line with the rest of the economy (Chart 16). But since then, and in particular over the past decade, returns to capital have far outpaced those at an economy-wide level. Chart 17 plots UK banks’ return on equity capital (ROE) since 1920 (Alessandri and Haldane (2009)). Although conceptually a different measure of returns to capital, the broad message is the same. Trends in ROE are clearly divided into two periods. In the period up until around 1970, ROE in banking was around 7% with a low variance. In other words, returns to finance broadly mimicked those in the economy as whole, in line with the gamble payoffs in Chart 6. But the 1970s mark a regime shift, with the ROE in banking roughly trebling to over 20%, again in line with gamble payoffs. Excess returns accumulated to capital as well as labour. These returns were by no means unique to UK banks. Chart 18 plots ROEs for major internationally active banks in the US and Europe during this century. Two features are striking. First, the level of ROEs was consistently at or above 20% and on a rising trend up until the crisis. This is roughly double ROEs in the non-financial sector over the period. Second, the degree of cross-country similarity in these ROE profiles is striking. This, too, is no coincidence.