Believing in Bail-In? Market Discipline and the Pricing of Bail-In Bonds

Abstract

Bail-in regulation is a centrepiece of the post-crisis overhaul of bank resolution. It requires major banks to maintain a sufficient amount of "bail-in debt" that can absorb losses during resolution. If resolution regimes are credible, investors in bail-in debt should have a strong incentive to monitor banks and price bail-in risk. We study the pricing of senior bail-in bonds to evaluate whether this is the case. We identify the bail-in risk premium by matching these bonds with comparable senior bonds that are issued by the same banking group but are not subject to bail-in risk. The premium is higher for riskier issuers, consistent with the notion that bond investors exert market discipline on banks. Yet the premium varies pro-cyclically: a decline in marketwide credit risk lowers the bail-in risk premium for all banks, with the compression much stronger for riskier issuers. Banks, in turn, time their bail-in bond issuance to take advantage of periods of low premia.

Keywords: too big to fail, banking regulation, TLAC, financial stability

JEL Classification: E44, E61, G28