Question:
Disucss about the Banking Regulation in United Arab Emirates Along With the Effectiveness of Such Regulations Especially In Times of Financial Crisis and Other Financial Breakdowns.
Banking regulations are of prime importance and are adopted by all commercial and private banks in order to maintain the financial stability in the banks along with the financial stability of the economy. The government of a particular country uses the banks as a tool for regulating the flow of money in and out of a particular economy. This study aims to focus on the banking regulation in United Arab Emirates along with the effectiveness of such regulations especially in times of financial crisis and other financial breakdowns.
The principal regulatory and governmental policies that control the banking sector in the United Arab Emirates are the UAE Federal Law No. 10 of 1980 that essentially concerns the Central Bank; the Organization of Banking and the Monetary System. The UAE Federal Law No. 18, 1993; UAE Federal Law No.6, 1985 that is concerned with the Islamic Banks also control the banking sector; investment companies and financial establishments in UAE and the various notices, circulars and resolutions that are issued by the governors of the UAE Central Bank also take a part in controlling the banking sector. The primary logic behind the origination of the banking regulations arises from the microeconomic concerns affecting the customers or the depositors who always feel the need to monitor and look after the risks that come up with the stability of the banks in case of a financial crisis. The banking sector also has been controlled by the statutory and regulatory provisions, that are popularly known as informal regulations. The regulatory provisions revolve around the restrictions imposed on new entries and branching; pricing restrictions; regulation on the linkage of ownership among the financial institutions; regulation regarding mergers and other associated regulations. In the recent times, banking regulation has shifted from structural regulation to modes of regulation that are more market oriented. As a result of this, competition has become widespread in relation to the responsibility of the bank regarding credit allocation and the improvement of financial services.
The Banking Law in UAE has been established by the United Arab Emirates Central Bank and constitutes of the provisions in details that clearly defines the role of the Central Bank. The Central Bank, along with the role of establishing the framework for banking regulations, carries out the responsibilities of issuance of currency, promoting, organizing and monitoring the process of banking as a whole and also acts as banks for the commercial banks in UAE. The Banking Law however, is not applicable in case of institutions of public credit; governmental investment institutions and development funds; insurance companies and agencies.
The commercial code that governs the banks contains the provisions that provide a description on the details of banking like the provisions in relation to bank accounts, credit documentary, bills of exchange, promissory notes and other related components (Al-Tamimi et al., 2016).
The Islamic Banking Law essentially constitutes of the regulations and provisions in relation to the establishment of the Islamic Banks. The Islamic Banking Law also controls the operational proceedings of the Islamic banks. The Banking Law also controls the Islamic banks to some extent.
The various regulations, circulars and notices that are issued by the UAE Central Bank control the several aspects of banking like the maintenance of the capital reserve ratios of the bank, capital adequacy norms and also reporting of the money laundering and other incidents to the UAE Central Bank.
In the early part of 1970, the financial systems in the world was featured by significant regulatory restrictions, like controls that were imposed on the quantity of credit and on interest rates, market access restrictions and in some rare cases, controls on the finance allocation amongst alternative borrowers. These regulations or restrictions automatically met some of the objectives established by the policies. Direct controls had been utilized in many countries to distribute finance to selected industries; interest rates were controlled in order to keep low the cost of credit, often leading to credit rationing (Abedifar et al., 2015).
The Basel Committee, in June 2004, issued a revised framework on Banking Supervision and named it Basel 2 for the purpose of measurement of capital adequacy and also for the purpose of identification of new minimum capital requirements for banks. The newly computed framework encouraged the banks to establish their very own formal risk-management systems so that they were able to calculate in a much more sophisticated and simple way their requirements for capital in minimal amounts, with the presence of oversight by the supervisor present in the endorsement of the system adequacy. The proposals published the Committee, was implemented by the end of 2006 and included two more regulations in relation to the banking regulations that father improved the process and computation of the minimum adequate capital required by the banks. The second regulation that was introduced, involved, a continuous interaction between banks and their supervisor for the purpose of following and accommodating the he evolution that the business practices were going through. The third regulation or the third pillar constituted of norms that were aimed at improving information flow to the public regarding the financial conditions of the banks, so that the risks faced by the banks could be mitigated, by the establishment of the market controls (Trabelsi & Fadhel, 2016).
The most crucial rationale for regulation in banking is concerned with the regulations subjected to the issues over the stability and the safety of the financial sector as a whole, financial institutions and the payments system. Mandatory deposit insurance schemes have been introduced so that the banks do not run out of money. The further vulnerability of the banks to becoming exposed are controlled by the capital adequacy norms and restrictions regarding requirements imposed by Basel as discussed earlier in this study.
While the Central bank is the principal regulatory authority of banks and financial institutions in the UAE, such entities are also subject to additional registration and licensing requirements at the federal and emirate levels (Iqbal & Molyneux, 2016).
The primary requirements of banking regulation are:
Establishment of the financial safety nets is of huge importance to governmental agencies for the purpose of mitigating events like loss of liquidity or the risk of the bank running insolvent that engage huge sums in relation to the costs to the banks themselves, the government and to the customers. Failure or insolvency of banks lead to destruction of the information capital of the banks as a result of the barrier or obstacle in the path of mutual trust between the bank and its customers that ultimately led to the reduction in investment and other economic activities. The potential customers or the depositors that deposit their sums in the bank suffer loss heavily as a reason for the failure of the banks and the government too spends a lot in saving the banks from the crisis that they go through. Therefore, one solution to such a problem is the deposit insurance schemes. These are one of the essential sector of the safety nets, established with the sole objective of improving financial stability and saving small investors from the financial loss that they incur in the case of a troubled or failing bank. The deposit insurance schemes provide guarantee against the deposits and thus, save the banks from running insolvent.
The deposit insurance schemes encourage the respective banks to invest in projects that have a high risk and also feature a high return. Therefore, the government safety net of deposit insurance scheme may be improved by adopting the following design features:
The need for financial safety net arrangements in the Islamic Financial Services Industry (IFSI) was given due importance in April 2010. A related report was published. This particular report did investigate and identify eight building blocks and targeted the further strengthening of the Islamic financial infrastructure both at the national and international levels to promote a resilient and efficient Islamic financial system. The report also lead to an insight into the mechanism of the safety net in regards to the financial conditions of the banks, as to how to make them stronger. These, along with finer vigilance by the supervising body, operational actions by the crucial components of the safety net make the Islamic banks resilient and give them the required resources for backing up their strength in case of a financial crisis or shock.
However, there are certain problems that are created by the establishment of the government safety nets. These are that the depositors who are protected get no reward or incentive for monitoring the behavior of the respective banks. Moreover, this information allow the banks to take on more risks than they normally would involve. The government also creates more moral hazards in the course of protecting its depositors. Some of the banks in the market are too large to fail. The managers of such institutions have the idea that if they fail, then in all probabilities the government will have to bail them out, thus, limiting the market discipline (Hassan, 2014).
In the modern day, the banks play an important role as a medium for the purpose of payment. On one hand, they utilize the depositors as their private liabilities and on the other hand the depositors are public goods. In order to gain the trust of the depositors, the government, provided guarantee for their deposits either explicitly or implicitly via deposit insurance systems as discussed in this particular study earlier (Song & Oosthuizen, 2014).
Banking crises generally occur when financial systems loose liquidity or become insolvent. This type of crisis particularly relates to fusions, closures, acquisitions or assistance on a large-scale from the government. In order to solve this problem, the monetarists are of the suggestion that an increase in the amount of money that is circulated within the financial sector, and thus leads to the inflation of the economy in order to counter the monetary reduction (Ueda & Di Mauro, 2013). According to the financial experts and the monetarists, the failures of the banks were the result of their state of panic. Another important reason stated for the banking crises is that the gap developed between the supply of credit and money supply led to budgetary deficit that ultimately led to the crisis (Hassan, Aliyu & Brodmann, 2017).
According to the report provided by the World Bank, at least 70 banking crises took place in the year of 1980 all through the developing and the developed nations. The impact of such crises especially those that were quantitative in nature were equal or in excess to the major banking crises suffered by the US.
The factors that are in general associated with a banking crisis are factors such as macroeconomic shocks that influence inflation, capital flows or interest rates; supervising policies that overlook the banks that is the banking regulations are deficient in nature in terms of the standards maintaining the capital and restrictions on the internal proceedings of the banks. Other major factors that are associated with the banking crises are the reluctance on the part of the owners to shut down financial institutions that have already run or are facing the risk of running insolvent. Even poor decisions taken by the government in relation to credit decisions and the efficient management of risk associated with credit also pave the way for banking crises.
Finally, some monetarists proposed the idea that the development of a regulation which would essentially predetermine the growth of the monetary supply and would ensure monetary stability and economic growth (Brewer & Jagtiani, 2013).
Thus, the theory of banking crises fundamentally proposes that a sharp deterioration in the economic and financial indicators that has resulted from an imbalance between the demand and supply of money, fall in the turnover of the assets other associated events result in a financial crisis or a banking crisis.
A banking crisis generally occurs due to the financial fragility in the economy. This refers to the fact that there are financial shocks in the economy which affect the profitability of the different industrial sectors in the economy. The banking crisis that have impacted the economy have always divided the economy into five respective phases that are the replacement of the business cycle, euphoria, climax and panic. The experts are of the opinion that a particular banking crisis begins with the replacement phase that implies the increase in the profitability of at least one industrial sector in the economy. This will result in increased investment in this particular sector of the economy. This will lead the economy to the euphoric phase of the economy, that has been mentioned in the discussion earlier. This economical state will result in triggering the banks to extend credit, as a result of expectation of higher profits from this particular sector. The increasing trend of investment in this particular sector will result in a boost in the price that will create more opportunities for profit. This phase is termed as the climax phase. This is the point where the artificial prices increase and the investors earn a maximum profit. A small price variation at this level will very efficiently result in a huge increase in interest rates that will surely lead to the phase of panic. This is this stage, that the economic activity slows down and the bankruptcies and increased rates of unemployment surfaces. The probable reasons for the banking crisis are rise in the rates of interests; decrease in the property market; increase of uncertainty; panicking by the banks and the un-estimated drop in the aggregate price level. The theory of banking crisis does explain the causes for the banking crisis but chalks out no explanation for the process of development of such a crisis or potential signs of such a crisis. Another point to be noted, in relation to the banking crisis is that the failure of the government policy or the role of government is not taken into consideration in case of such a theory.
Before understanding the systemically important financial institutions, one should conceptualize the meaning of systemic risks. Systemic risks refer to those risks that result in the breakdown or collapse of an entire financial system or the economy as a whole. The systemic risk was the major reason that led to the financial crisis of 2008 (Brewer & Jagtiani, 2013).
The systemically important financial institutions refer to the financial institutions whose disorderly failure on account of their size, systemic interconnectedness and complexity of the organization would result in significant disruption to the financial system and the economic activities on a broader sense (Reinhart & Rogoff, 2013). The objective of a particular SIFI framework is majorly concerned with the systemic risks and the problems associated with the moral hazard that are faced by the financial institutions that are too big to fail. In order to reduce the rate of failure of the SIFIs a particular framework policy has been established that lists down the particular measures that make these institutions financially strong. Some of these objectives are as follows:
SIFIs are important in UAE because the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates had taken the initiatives to host the meeting with the financial stability board in order to restructure and reform the effect of the SIFIs in UAE. The members of the meeting discussed the regulatory reforms and their respective impacts along with its vulnerabilities and issues related to the financial stability of the SIFIs. The Middle East has been hugely affected by the financial crisis in 2008 (Kaserer & Klein, 2016). The measures that were developed by the Financial Stability Board aimed at potentially decreasing the impact and probability of the failure of the systemically important financial institutions by the facility of providing additional capital requirements. The measures were also aimed at recovery of the affected SIFIs. Lastly, the reduction of the contagion risks with the financial markets were also one of the major objectives with which the measures were established.
However, financial experts argue that the financial regulations, instead of identifying the financial institutions that are too big to fail, identify those that are just large and do not imminently face the risk of failing. This had been a serious issue and called for the Basel Committee for taking the initiative for the identification of factors that are essential for the assessment of whether a financial institution is systemically important or not. Such factors may be the size, complexity, interconnectedness and the lack of already available substitutes in relation to the financial infrastructure and global activity. The development of the banks that have occupied a major portion of the banking industry has to be strictly monitored and regulated by a supervising authority in order to improve and maintain the financial stability of the banks (Burnside, Eichenbaum & Rebelo, 2016).
Conclusion
Therefore, as it can be concluded from the above discussion, the importance of the establishment of the banking regulations has been of huge importance both from the perspective of the economy and that of the society. Banking regulations that have been imposed, are primarily aimed towards the protection of the investment by the public and other informal investors. The effectiveness of the banking regulations lies in the economical indicators that display the health of the economy in terms of the credit rating and the liquidity of the banks. The theory of the banking crises also revolves around the fact that the occurrence of the five phases result in the generation of systemically important financial institutions. The systemically important financial institutions or the SIFIs if facing financial crisis, then the failure of such banks may affect the entire economy drastically. Thus, the regulation of such institutions are of major importance and should be regulated on the basis of the standards established by the Basel Committee. The Financial Stability Board has been another major regulating body that has primarily established the measures for regulating the SIFIs. The SIFIs in UAE have been regulated on the basis of the report that has been published by the Financial Stability Board.
Therefore, the banking sector in UAE have been well regulated and monitored by the banking regulations and the regulating bodies like the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board.
References
Abedifar, P., Ebrahim, S. M., Molyneux, P., & Tarazi, A. (2015). Islamic banking and finance: recent empirical literature and directions for future research. Journal of Economic Surveys, 29(4), 637-670.
Al-Tamimi, H. A. H., Warsame, M. H., & Duqi, A. (2016). Readiness of the UAE banks for the implementation of Basel III. International Journal of Economics and Business Research, 11(4), 303-316.
Al-Tamimi, H. A. H., Warsame, M. H., & Duqi, A. (2016). Readiness of the UAE banks for the implementation of Basel III. International Journal of Economics and Business Research, 11(4), 303-316.
Brewer, E., & Jagtiani, J. (2013). How much did banks pay to become Too-Big-To-Fail and to become systemically Important?. Journal of Financial Services Research, 43(1), 1-35.
Burnside, C., Eichenbaum, M., & Rebelo, S. (2016). Currency crises models. In Banking Crises (pp. 79-83). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Hassan, M. K. (2014). Risk narrative disclosure strategies to enhance organizational legitimacy: Evidence from UAE financial institutions. International Journal of disclosure and Governance, 11(1), 1-17.
Hassan, M. K., Aliyu, S., & Brodmann, J. (2017). 14. An introduction to Islamic banking and finance. The Most Important Concepts in Finance, 250.
Iqbal, M., & Molyneux, P. (2016). Thirty years of Islamic banking: History, performance and prospects. Springer.
Kaserer, C., & Klein, C. (2016). Systemic Risk in Financial Markets: How Systemically Important are Insurers?.
Reinhart, C. M., & Rogoff, K. S. (2013). Banking crises: an equal opportunity menace. Journal of Banking & Finance, 37(11), 4557-4573.
Song, M. I., & Oosthuizen, C. (2014). Islamic banking regulation and supervision: Survey results and challenges (No. 14-220). International Monetary Fund.
Trabelsi, M., & Fadhel, D. (2016). The Financial Sector: Performance and Issues. The Economy of Dubai, 93.
Ueda, K., & Di Mauro, B. W. (2013). Quantifying structural subsidy values for systemically important financial institutions. Journal of Banking & Finance, 37(10), 3830-3842.
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