Nearly 200 banks at risk for same fate as SVB: study
Nearly 200 banks at risk for same fate as SVB: study
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March 18, 2023 12:03pm
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Nearly 200 more banks may be vulnerable to the same type of risk that took down Silicon Valley Bank: The value of the assets they hold.
There are 186 banks across the country that could fail if half of their depositors quickly withdraw their funds, a new study published on the Social Science Research Network found. Even insured depositors — those with $250,000 or less in the bank — could have problems getting their cash if these institutions face the sort of run that Silicon Valley saw a week ago.
The concern is that these banks hold a significant amount of their assets in interest-rate sensitive financial instruments like government bonds and mortgage backed securities. The value of those older, low-interest investments dropped sharply as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates over the past year.
In the case of SVB, the Santa Clara, California-based institution parked much of its cash in long-term government bonds, which are ultra-safe in terms of losing the initial investment, but were not worth as much as when SVB bought them, because interest rates have since gone higher. The bank had to sell off some of those bonds to meet customer demands for withdrawals at less than it paid for them, resulting in a nearly $2 billion loss.
