Banking Integration in the Euro Area

54 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2005

See all articles by Inês Cabral

Inês Cabral

European Central Bank (ECB) - Directorate Financial Stability and Supervision

Frank Dierick

European Central Bank (ECB)

Jukka M. Vesala

Bank of Finland - Finnish Financial Supervision Authority (FIN-FSA)

Date Written: December 2002

Abstract

This paper provides an assessment of the degree of integration in banking services in the euro area. It diverges from the typical analysis on integration in the financial sector by focusing on the main financial products and services provided by banks to corporate and personal clients rather than on financial markets. As the "law-of-one-price" concept is often not applicable to banking products and services, a wide range of quantitative and qualitative indicators of integration is used in the analysis. Indicators of integration are reviewed for three product areas: wholesale (unsecured interbank loans and deposits, repo market) capital market-related (corporate finance services, asset management and trading) and retail (directed to households and small firms). The main conclusions are that while the market on wholesale banking services is strongly integrated and integration is advancing at a fast pace in capital market-related activities, market segmentation is still significant at the retail level.

Suggested Citation

Cabral, Inês and Dierick, Frank and Vesala, Jukka, Banking Integration in the Euro Area (December 2002). ECB Working Paper No. 6, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=748969 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.748969

Inês Cabral (Contact Author)

European Central Bank (ECB) - Directorate Financial Stability and Supervision ( email )

Kaiserstrasse 29
D-60311 Frankfurt am Main
Germany

Frank Dierick

European Central Bank (ECB) ( email )

Sonnemannstrasse 22
Frankfurt am Main, 60314
Germany

Jukka Vesala

Bank of Finland - Finnish Financial Supervision Authority (FIN-FSA) ( email )

P.O. Box 160
FIN-00101 Helsinki
Finland

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
750
Abstract Views
3,653
Rank
68,628
PlumX Metrics