Risky Borrowing Is Making a Comeback, but Banks Are on the Sidelines, Reports American Bankruptcy Institute 6/13/19 E-Newsletter
A decade after reckless home lending nearly destroyed the financial system, the business of making risky loans is back, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. This time, the money is bypassing the traditional, and heavily regulated, banking system and flowing through a growing network of businesses that have stepped in to provide loans to parts of the economy that banks abandoned after 2008. With almost $15 trillion in assets, the shadow-banking sector in the U.S. is roughly the same size as the entire banking system of Britain, the world’s fifth-largest economy. In certain areas — including mortgages, auto lending and some business loans — shadow banks have eclipsed traditional banks, which have spent much of the last decade pulling back on lending in the face of stricter regulatory standards aimed at keeping them out of trouble. But new problems arise when the industry depends on lenders that compete aggressively, operate with less of a cushion against losses and have fewer regulations to keep them from taking on too much risk. Recently, a chorus of industry officials and policymakers — including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell — have started to signal that they’re watching the growth of riskier lending by these nonbanks. “We decided to regulate the banks, hoping for a more stable financial system, which doesn’t take as many risks,” said Amit Seru, a professor of finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Where the banks retreated, shadow banks stepped in.” Lately, that lending is coming from companies like Quicken Loans, loanDepot and Caliber Home Loans. Between 2009 and 2018, the share of mortgage loans made by these businesses and others like them soared from 9 percent to more than 52 percent, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. While they don’t have a nationwide regulator that ensures safety and soundness like banks do, non-banks say that they are monitored by a range of government entities, from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to state regulators.