Volume 20, Issue 4 October 2024

Still “Too Much, Too Late”: Provisioning for Expected Loan Losses

Abstract

The new accounting standards of IFRS 9 and U.S. GAAP adopt the expected loss (EL) approach for loan loss recognition. We investigate the effect of the EL approach on bank loan supply and stability. When a bank is unable to anticipate a downturn in the business cycle, it ends up recognizing the bulk of expected losses after the arrival of a contraction. This aggravates lending procyclicality and can potentially worsen bank stability. We develop a dynamic model of a bank to quantitatively assess these effects and show that they are economically significant.

Authors

  • Roman Goncharenko
  • Asad Rauf

JEL codes

  • G21
  • G28
  • M41
  • M48

Other papers in this issue

Toni Ahnert and Katrin Assenmacher and Peter Hoffmann and Agnese Leonello and Cyril Monnet and Davide Porcellacchia

Shalva Mkhatrishvili and Giorgi Tsutskiridze and Lasha Arevadze

Tobias Adrian and Vitor Gaspar and Francis Vitek

Laura Acevedo and Marc Hofstetter

Juan M Londono and Stijn Claessens and Ricardo Correa