By Chris Clare
We are getting further into the credit crisis, and as we do so, people are finding it more difficult to get credit for anything. This is causing people to look even more closely at interest rates than ever before. A year ago, Joe Public wouldn't have had a clue what LIBOR was or what it meant. Only those in the financial industry were aware of its meaning. Nowadays it is common knowledge, and a very hot topic.
The nation is now aware that LIBOR, the London Inter Bank Offered Rate reflects the actual rate at which banks borrow money from each other and is accepted as an accurate barometer of how global markets are reacting to market conditions.
The British Banking Association (BBA) works out the BBA LIBOR rate on any given day by taking the inter bank borrowing rates from 16 contributor panel banks and analyses the middle eight rates (dismissing the first 4 and the last 4) to arrive at an average rate.
Over the last twelve months the difference between the LIBOR rate and the Bank of England base rate has been substantial and it has also been acknowledged that the period of this variation is also longer than ever before. There has recently been a drop in the rate with a 1.065 percentage reduction on Friday 7th November giving a rate of 4.496% (its lowest point since April 2004), reflecting a slashing of the interest rate by 1.5% to 3% by the Bank of England. The pressure has been put on the financial institutions to pass this on to the general public, not only by the government, but also by the media. With this in mind, many of the leading banks are following the Bank of England's lead.
In clamoring for reductions to be passed on there are a number of factors that appear to have not been taken in to consideration;
Current customers will of course welcome a reduction in interest rates. For the bank, however, this can have a damaging effect on arrears performance. As borrowers are set to pay less monthly, this automatically puts up arrears percentages. For example, if a borrower normally pays 350 a month, but is 300 behind, they are effectively not an issue as yet. However, if those monthly payments are brought down to 290, that 300 in arrears is considered to be over a month's worth of payment, which then puts them on the problem list. This will have a knock-on throughout, as people who are 1month behind move to 2, 2 to 3 and so on. Therefore, the amount of people being litigated against will also increase.
Banks who wish to lend to other banks at the LIBOR rate will be looking at the performance of the borrowing bank's mortgage book. This will inevitably have slipped with the decrease in rates, and will of course only slip further as more cuts happen in the future. As a result, banks will become more unwilling to lend out as the possible risk of lending increases, which will in turn be detrimental to the LIBOR rate.
There is another way that banks achieve funding for their daily dealings. Income from their loan books and retail deposits are also used for mortgages and loans. This is how some banks have been able to keep afloat during the recent crisis and it is indeed true to say that the competition that now exists for investments is every bit as intense as it was for mortgages just a few years back.
The drop in rates will mean that the income derived from borrowers will plummet, although banks will continue to grapple for investment business. Therefore the bank's profits will droop and their recovery will be made slower. As the banks fight for investment, the rates drop even below the LIBOR rate, meaning that the only way for banks to get liquid funds is through retail business. In that respect, LIBOR must then drop far enough to be attractive to banks in comparison with the cost of getting in retail business.
In conclusion it is fair to say that the Governments strategy has had a positive impact on the market and will provide much needed confidence. However it is also fair to stay that there are still many challenges ahead and the antidotal injection of cash and reduction of interest rates will certainly come with some painful side effects. On a side note while I write this, LIBOR has actually gone back up to 5.65% go figure!