Basel III and Systemic Risk
from Part IV - Banking Regulation and Supervision in Hong Kong
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2022
Banks fail when an illiquidity event depletes capital reserves. Liquidity is sourced from assets that can readily be transformed into cash or from wholesale funding markets and central banks. Basel III strengthens bank balance sheets by allowing supervisors to release capital and liquidity reserves during times of market liquidity stress. This chapter analyzes the implementation of the Basel III capital and liquidity reforms in Hong Kong, banking sector stability during the 2008–9 global financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, and systemic supervision. Hong Kong is a unique international financial centre because it is overwhelmingly populated by domestic systemically important banks. Universal banking and Basel III compel banking sector supervision of Hong Kong’s securities and insurance sectors, despite falling outside the supervisory design of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. This chapter argues that different supervisory structures and models affect the regulation and supervision of financial stability in Hong Kong’s banking sector. Insurance and wealth management products in the banking industry can produce systemic risks that might be overlooked by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Supervisory bias towards the banking sector in conjunction with cross-sectoral underlap could cause financial instability and a systemic banking crisis in Hong Kong.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.