Post-crisis Excess Liquidity and Bank Lending

Analyse approfondie 14-09-2018

With the Asset Purchase Program, the European Central Bank has supplied significant amounts of liquidity into the financial system starting from 2015, resulting yet into a new upswing in excess liquidity. The expanded asset purchase programme (APP) program broadly coincided with further cuts in the ECB’s deposit facility rate, which currently stands at -0.4%. Against this background, this note assesses the ECB policy of negative rate on the deposit facility and discusses the associated risks in the context of an excess liquidity overhang for the euro area, including risk-appetite for banks. This document was requested by the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.