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Banking in a Challenging Environment
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Banking in a Challenging Environment

Business Models, Ethics and Approaches Toward Risks

Gert Wehinger
In: OECD Journal Financial Market Trends
OECD, 2012

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Recommendation

The global financial system should be based on trust. However, scandals and risk management failures have shaken the public’s confidence in the industry. Participants discussed this, among other challenges, at the October 2012 OECD Financial Roundtable. In this brief article, OECD economist Gert Wehinger reports on those discussions. Though his text reads like the minutes of a meeting and lacks depth, getAbstract believes it is a helpful overview of the current thinking among bankers, regulators and consumer advocates on the need for financial reform.

Summary

The October 2012 OECD Financial Roundtable explored issues threatening the stability of the financial sector. Financial crises and a string of scandals, such as LIBOR fixing and rogue trading, have weakened investors’ confidence. Re-establishing consumer faith is crucial but complicated and calls for new “incentives, rules and regulations.” Banks have upgraded their risk management and have shrunk their balance sheets. Their deleveraging, however, has resulted in “home bias,” or an emphasis on national lending, which runs directly counter to efforts to promote global economic growth, particularly...

About the Author

Gert Wehinger is a senior economist at the OECD Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs.

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