Noninterest Income Generating Activities and the Future of Banking

Abstract

Firms' financial structure has changed drastically over the last decades. Entrepreneurs can get access to direct financing much more easily than they used to. With accelerating financial innovation, this better access to financial markets coincides with financial deepening, and it importantly contributes to disintermediation.To accommodate this structural mutation, banking regulation has adapted. It now allows financial institutions to be much more involved in market-based activities (e.g., securitization, investment banking and trading). Consequently, the banking landscape has completely mutated compared to the traditional model of the seventies. This paper discusses the implications of such a change for the future of banking, with a particular focus on the challenges related to macroprudential policies and tools, as they currently stand, and as they are likely to evolve to fulfil their role -i.e., optimally --in monitoring and supervising bank systemic risk.