MUTUAL FUND BANKING: A MARKET APPROACH

MUTUAL FUND BANKING: A MARKET APPROACH Tyler Cowen and Randall Kroszner Introduction Weexaminemutual fundbankingas an alternative form offinancial intermediation. Individuals would hold checkable deposits at finan-cialintermediaries structuredas mutual funds. Althoughthe nominal valueofdepositor holdings would not be fixed, risk could be hedged through the choice of portfolios. The regulations embodied in the Glass-Steagall Act, federal deposit insurance, and Federal Reserve operations would not be necessary to provide a sound and efficient bankingandfinancial system. Ourtreatment ofmutual fund banking isintended asalikelyandviable scenario fortheevolution ofbanking and financial institutions under laissez faire. After a briefdiscussion of problems with current institutions, we outline the operation ofamutual fund banking system and the forces that would encourage its evolution and development. Comparisons and contrasts with a number of related ideas will help clarify the mutual fund banking proposal. The Current Depository Institution Crisis When examining policy alternatives, stability, and security ofthe monetary and financial sectors is a consideration of prime concern. Current regulatory policy utilizes deposit insurance and a lender of last resortas a response tothe instabilities ofa debt-based, fractional CatoJournal,Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 1990).Copyright © Cato Institute. All rights reserved. Tyler Cowen is Associate Professor of Economics atGeorge Mason University and Randall Kroszner is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, Graduate School ofBusiness. Theauthors wish to thankRobertBarro, Richard Cooper, Kevin Dowd, David Glasner, Stephan Kalb, David Meiselman, Giovanna Mossetti, Joseph Salerno,andStergios Skaperdasfor usefulcommentsanddiscussions. An earlier version ofthe paper was presented at the Cato Institute’s Seventh Annual Monetary Conference, which was funded by the George Edward Durell Foundation. 223 CATO JOURNAL reserve banking system; such instabilities include bank runs and asset-liabilitymaturitymismatches(seeMcCulloch1981and1987). Although deposit insurance has eliminatedcertain sources of financial instability, the cost has been high. The currentdeposit insurance system subsidizes bank risk and creates a moral hazard problem, ultimately at taxpayer expense. In the long run, deposit insurance is likely to make the banking system less secure, because depositors lose the incentive tomonitorandfoster stability(see Kane 1985).’ The regulatory dynamic has responded to the moral hazard prob-lem associated with deposit insurance by regulating bank assets and bank risk taking. Such regulations, however, are not a long-term viable solution to the problem athand. In the early 1980s, for instance, regulatory change was considered pressing because thrifts were rapidly losing money as a result oftheir inability to use asset diversification to insulate themselves from interest-rate risk. Main-taining previous regulations onthrift industryassets would alsohave created serious, although perhaps less-immediate, financial prob-lems for the industry and the deposit insurance fund. Although the situation for commercial banks is not at a crisis level, as with the thrifts, regulators still face the Scylla ofassetrestrictions and capital requirements, which reduce bank profitability and viability against competitors, and the Charybdis of continued deregulation, which could engender moral hazard problems. Current banking institutions and regulations are thus subject to long-runerosion. Mutual fundbanking has the potential to alleviate many ofthe problems oftraditional deposit banking—the combina-tion of deregulation and mutual fund structure examined in this paper would radicallydiffer from the current structure ofdepository institutions. Although depositors would not be required to use mutual fund banks, mutual fund banking is likely to arise in the absence of government intervention. ‘Deposit insurance has already created disastrous consequences in the savings and loan industry. Savings and loan institutions wereallowed to diversity theirasset hold-ings into riskier assets than mortgage loans, the traditional S&L staple. S&Ls subse-quently invested in risky real estate ventures and loans,playing a “heads, I win; tails, the deposit insurancefund loses”game. Asa result, governmentfunding requirements may be as high as $300 billion. Recent advocates of variants of mutual fund banking include Black (1970), Fama (1980), Glasner (1987, 1989), Greenfield and Yeager (1983), and Kareken (1986); the related views of Simons (1948), Friedman (1960), and Litan (1987) will be discussed below. 224 MUTUAL FUND BANKING Mutual Fund Banking The alternative banking structure we explore entails changes on both the liability and asset side of bank balance sheets. Depository institutions would resemble mutual funds rather than current banks. On the liability side, the deposits of mutual fund banks would representa claim on theassetportfolioheldby the intermediary. Consequently, these bank liabilities mayfluctuate in nominal value, dependingon the worthofthe underlying assets. “Non-par” banking would be possible, in which the number ofdepositunits or “shares” required to clearacheck fora stated nominal sum would notbe fixed at a one-to-one ratio. On the asset side, a wide variety ofmarketable claims, includingequity, bonds,commercial paper, government obli-gations, options, futures, and commodities, would be available as investment vehicles for the fund. The ownership and management structure of mutual fund banks deserves specialattention.Themutualfund intermediaries we dis-cuss are different from the current-day mutual savings banks, credit unions, and mutual savings and loans, which we will refer to as mutual banks. In both mutual banks and mutual funds banks, the depositors constitutethe bank’s “shareholders.”One becomes an “owner” ofthe bank by making a deposit andceases to be an owner only by withdrawing the deposit. In the mutual fund banking pro- posalwe consider, depositors are residualclaimants andhold a direct claim to the assets ofthe intermediary, thus earning a return tied to the performance ofthe underlyingportfolio. Underthe historical structure ofmutual banks, in contrast,depositorsreceiveapredeter-mined interest payment and are not true residual claimants. 3Although mutual fund bank accounts would not have a fixed par value, mutual fund banks might find it convenient to maintain par value check clearing as anaccounting convention for the course ofordinary business. Fluctuations in the nominal value of the account would still occur, but the value ofa share would be priced atone, and capital gains would simply increase the number of shares. A checkwritten out for a certain number ofdollars would be used to transfer the same number of shares; a similar procedure is often used for today’s money market mutual funds. Ifan account sufferssufficiently large capital losses, however, par value clearingmightno longer be sustainable. Thepurchasing powerofeach sharewould then floatwith thepriceofthe underlying assetbasket, andtheaccountwould bemarkedto market each time acheck was cleared. Rasmusen (1988) and Woodward (1988) analyze these institutional forms. Rasmusen shows that mutual banks held a significant percentage oftime deposits (sometimes morethan 80 percent) before the onset ofdeposit insurance and also had significantly lower failure rates than shareholder-owned banks. Rolnick and Weber (1988) discuss a form of mutual fundbanking that prevailed during the American freebanking era. SeealsoGoodhart (1987), Selginand White (1987), and Wicker(1987) on issues related to mutual fund banking. 225 CATO JOURNAL Mutual fund banks are likely to evolve along the lines ofcurrent money market mutual funds. Depositors would invest in open-end mutual funds in which depositors/shareholders would be full resid-ual claimants to the performance ofthe asset portfolio. The mutual fund would be managed by aseparate entity that probably would be a division of a “financial supermarket,” a publicly traded stock or private company such as J. C. Penney, Dreyfus, Merrill Lynch, or Citibank. As with today’s mutual funds, managers could be compen- sated with a percentage of the value ofthe fund’s assets, although more complexperformance-basedreward schemesare alsopossible. Depositors could selecttheir porifolios from a large set ofpossible alternatives. For the most risk averse, funds holding purely short-term federal government or government-guaranteed issues would provide the highestdegree ofsecurity fromcapital value fluctuation, as both interest-rate and bankruptcy risk would be negligible. Other investment-grade instruments ofvaryingmaturities, combined with the use of interest-rate futures, also would have a high degree of safety. For securities or commodities with well-developed and liquid options and futures markets, various hedging strategies areavailable that canbe usedto eliminate much ofthe risk ofcapitalvalue fluctua-tions. The stock index futures market, for instance, permits hedging of broad equity portfolios. A great diversity ofrisk-return configura-tions—for example, insuring downside risk without eliminating upside potential—are available through existing markets for securi-ties and their derivatives. Thedevelopment ofmutual fundbanking would undoubtablyaug-ment the liquidity ofthese rapidly developing markets and encour-age additional innovation. Individuals need notlearn the intricacies 5Aclosed-endmutual fund formatcould be usedalso, although suchfunds often trade at a premium or discount to their net underlying asset value (see Thompson 1978). The unresolvedquestions surrounding closed-end fund pricingmakethem less likely candidates than open-end funds. Thereis thus nodanger that“depositors’funds” wouldbe usedto subsidize nonbank activities;the mutual fundprinciple requires the banktoserve as a pure intermediary. Account holders and not banks would possess the legal claims to the assets behind their accounts; the only “funds” remaining for the use ofthe intermediary would the commissions charged on accounts. 1n the absenceofdepositinsurance, theuse ofbank debt (ratherthanequity) asa form ofwealthinsurance for depositors appears counterintuitive, asinsurance theory implies thatindividuals wishto insure their portfolio against large swings in value, not small swings. Fixednominal claims implythatthinly capitalizedbanks(themselvesvulnera-ble to large losses throughruns) are protecting depositors againstsmall nominal losses. Insurance policies, incontrast, usually protectagainstlarge losses butnot small losses (i.e., they contain a deductible). See Calorniris and Cone (1984). 226 MUTUAL FUND BANKING offutures and options markets to hedge; mutual fund banks would offer a variety of claims to fully, partially, and unhedged funds, so the depositor needonly choose his desiredrisk-return structure (see, e.g., Fama 1980). Hedging, ofcourse, cannot decrease the aggregate riskfacedbytheeconomyasawhole,butitcanshiftthisriskaway from depository institutions and the payments system. The superior returns available on certain financialinstruments wouldbeattractiveforthosewhodonotdemandfullguaranteesand are willingto accept a higher variance of returns. Equity portfolios, for instance, outperformotherinvestmentswithrespecttolong-run rates of return. In addition, even strongly risk-averse depositors may prefer asset holdings with varying nominal returns and will not necessarily seek refuge in fixed nominal claims that do not protect the real value of the holder’s assets. The loss of personal savings through inflation is a common theme in economictheory; as recently asthe last 1970s,Americans were earningnegative realrates ofreturn oninterest-bearingbanking accounts. Bank Stability In contrast to traditional banks, depository institutions organized upon the mutual fund principle cannotfail ifthe value oftheir assets declines. Since the liabilities ofthe mutual fund bank are precisely claims to the underlying assets, changes in value are represented immediately in a change in the price ofthe deposit shares. The run- inducing incentive to withdraw funds atpar before the bankrenders its liabilities illiquid by closing vanishes with the possibility ofnon-par clearing. In effect, there would be a continuous (or, say, daily) “marking to market” of the assets and liabilities. Such a system obviates the need for much ofthe regulation long associated with a debt-based, fractional reserve system, as the equity-nature of the liabilities eliminates the sources ofinstability associated with tradi-tional banking institutions. Althoughmoney marketmutualfunds operate withoutgovernment insurance,theirsafetyrecordhassofarbeenimpeccable.Withassets in excess of $300 billion, they have gained the confidence ofa large set of depositors (Federal Reserve Bulletin, January 1989, p. A45). Money market funds have been able to handle very large and rapid inflowsandoutflowswithoutdisruption.In 1983,forinstance, money marketmutual fundshareholderswithdrewroughly one-quarterof 8Smith (1988) reports that in the 1926—87 period stocks delivered an average annual nominal return, including dividends, of9.9 percent. In comparison, bonds averaged 4.9. Mehra and Prescott (1985) present a detailed, technical study of superior stock returns—the so-called equity premium puzzle. 227 ... - tailieumienphi.vn