Bank Liquidity Risk Management and Supervision: which Lessons from Recent Market Turmoil?

The aim of the paper is to analyse the current liquidity risk management techniques and supervisory approaches, in order to identify how both could be improved in the light of the recent market turmoil caused by the sub-prime crisis and potential sources of instability directly connected with the ‘originate-to-distribute’ business model. Current liquidity risk models demonstrated to undervalue extreme events affecting funding and market risk in global scenarios. At the same time, regulatory and supervisory regimes continue to be nationally based and substantially differentiated, pointing out significant differences which, in some circumstances, could generate regulatory arbitrages, as well as the effectiveness of supervisory actions could be reduced. The research, therefore, intends to highlight the most significant features to consider in order to implement an effective liquidity risk management and to achieve a more integrated supervisory framework for global financial markets. In this perspective, the effort of a regulatory authority to validate the adoption of internal models for liquidity risk is also investigated. Last, the paper analyses the most important lessons concerning liquidity management from recent episodes of stress.