Interest rate and deposit run risk: New evidence from euro area banks in the 2022-2023 tightening cycle

Rising interest rates expose the interaction between hidden losses on long-duration assets and flighty uninsured deposits. This column uses confidential data for 139 euro area banks to analyse this mechanism. It estimates that unrealised losses on loans and bonds held at amortised cost averaged about 30% by September 2023, and were largest for smaller retail lenders with long-dated mortgages. Interest rate swaps and the deposit franchise offset close to half of asset devaluations, but vulnerabilities persist and deposit runs remain a risk. Supervisors should closely monitor banks relying heavily on the franchise while holding long-duration assets with limited hedging.

In the classic maturity transformation model (Diamond and Dybvig 1983), banks finance long-term, illiquid assets with short-term deposits. This mismatch means that when interest rates rise, the market value of banks’ long-dated assets falls more sharply than that of their short-term liabilities.

Whether these valuation effects, which often remain hidden as ‘unrealised losses’ under standard accounting rules, threaten financial stability depends largely on depositor behaviour. Deposit rates tend to adjust sluggishly to market rates. This creates a ‘deposit franchise’ (the present value of banks paying depositors below market rates) that gains value as market rates rise. As a result, most banks’ deposits behave like low-cost, long-dated liabilities, providing a natural hedge against falling asset values.

Drechsler et al.  (2021) show that banks use this deposit franchise to lengthen the maturity of their assets, and that those with the stickiest deposits lengthen the most, something we also confirm for euro area banks (Rice and Guerrini 2025). However, the franchise is valuable only while deposits stay put. Increases in interest rates simultaneously enlarge the franchise and the unrealised losses on the assets it hedges. If confidence falters, a run can destroy the deposit franchise precisely when it is most needed, a mechanism demonstrated by Egan et al.  (2017) and brought vividly to life by the collapse of SVB in 2023.

The failure of SVB, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank forced policymakers globally to ask: Are other banks sitting on similar latent losses? And how close are these banks to destabilising runs?

Evidence from the euro area

We examine these questions for 139 euro area banks using detailed confidential data (Rice and Guerrini 2025). The ECB’s rate hikes (July 2022 to September 2023) were comparable to those in the US, and euro area banks had also lengthened asset durations during the low-rate decade.

While rising rates boosted accounting profits, they led to a sharp deterioration in the market value of euro area banks’ assets. We estimate that unrealised losses on loans and bonds held at amortised cost averaged about 30% of book equity by September 2023, peaking at 60% for some banks.

These figures are significantly lower than those of US banks, where losses averaged 75-95% of equity, and roughly 10% of banks had larger unrealised losses than SVB (Jiang et al. 2024, Drechsler et al. 2024).

Structural differences and heterogeneity

One key difference is asset duration: US banks hold three times more long-dated debt securities as a share of total assets than euro area banks (Martín Fuentes et al. 2023). ¹ Since bonds are constantly priced in liquid markets, latent losses on bond portfolios are more evident to investors and depositors than those hidden in loan books. Furthermore, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dominate in the US, whereas in Europe they co-exist with shorter fixes and variable-rate contracts.

This heterogeneity is crucial. Banks in variable-rate countries saw little impact on loan portfolio values but still benefitted from the rising deposit franchise. Indeed, including hedges, one euro area bank in six saw its mark-to-market net worth rise as rates increased. ²

The impact varied by bank profile (Figure 1). Losses were largest for smaller retail lenders with long-dated mortgages and limited swap derivatives; larger banks used swaps more actively but had a greater share of losses on bond holdings.

Figure 1 Balance sheet revaluations as a share of pre-rate-hike equity, split by bank size

Notes: The figure shows revaluations for banks split by size tercile based on total assets in 2023. Each bar represents an individual bank. The visualisation highlights that smaller banks (a) often faced larger relative losses on household (HH) loans, while larger banks (b, c) utilised interest rate swap (IRS) derivatives more actively but had more of their significant exposure to bond (AC/FV) revaluations.

By September 2023, when the yield curve on AAA-rated government bonds reached its peak, interest-rate swaps (IRS) had absorbed roughly one-fifth of euro area banks’ unrealised losses. Greater cross-country variation in mortgage terms supports a deeper swaps market in Europe, with pension funds also acting as key counterparties. In the US, by contrast, banks have historically hedged far less (Begenau et al. 2015, McPhail et al. 2023).

The deposit franchise offset a further one-third of euro area banks’ unrealised losses at the peak of the cycle. Banks with less concentrated, retail-heavy deposits benefitted most due to the relative inertia of their depositors. Combined, the two mechanisms hedged, on average, 46% of asset devaluations, though effectiveness varied (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Share of asset devaluations hedged by the deposit franchise and interest rate swap derivatives at the bank level

Notes: The x-axis shows the share of asset devaluations hedged through the deposit franchise (blue), interest rate swap derivatives (yellow), and combined (orange). Across all banks, the average combined hedge was 46%. The y-axis shows the number of banks for each hedging bucket.

Regulatory differences also mattered. The 2018 US deregulation exempted banks like SVB from rigorous stress tests and liquidity rules. In the euro area, all significant banks face the same core requirements and entered the cycle with strong liquidity, bolstered by ECB funding and excess reserves, reducing fire-sale risks to meet deposit withdrawals.

Deposit run simulations: A fragile tail

To assess the risk of an SVB-style collapse, we simulated a deposit run. We calculated the outflow of uninsured deposits required to wipe out each bank’s marked-to-market net worth (including the deposit franchise and swaps).

The results reveal a fragile tail (Figure 3). While the average bank was resilient, by September 2023, a 5% outflow of uninsured deposits would have rendered three banks insolvent on a market-value basis – a potential trigger for a cliff-edge run. A 10% outflow would have pushed 26 banks over this threshold.

While less severe than the US, where simulations showed hundreds of banks at risk, euro area banks were not immune. The failure of one vulnerable bank may have triggered a broader systemic panic under less favourable circumstances.

Figure 3 Change in marked-to-market net worth and percent of uninsured depositors running in order to make a bank mark-to-market insolvent

Notes: The figure shows the change in marked-to-market net worth as of September 2023 as a fraction of banks pre-rate-hike net worth on the x-axis. The y-axis shows the share of uninsured deposit outflows that would have caused the bank to be insolvent on a mark-to-market basis. Short, medium and long duration refer to the duration of mortgage portfolios only.

Lessons for policymakers

The 2022-2023 monetary cycle highlighted key vulnerabilities for policymakers:

1. The deposit franchise is a double-edged sword. A less concentrated, retail deposit base stabilises funding and allows banks to keep deposit rates low. We find that a higher share of uninsured deposits necessitated larger increases in deposit rates to retain flighty depositors, whereas a higher share of household overnight deposits correlated with lower rate rises. ³ However, the pricing power from a sticky deposit base also encourages banks to lengthen asset duration, heightening exposure to unrealised losses and cliff-edge runs. Supervisors should scrutinise banks relying heavily on the franchise while holding long-duration assets with limited hedging.
2. There is a need to complete the banking union with a fully fledged European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS). Our simulation shows that a 5% outflow of uninsured deposits in September 2023 may have pushed three euro area banks into mark-to-market insolvency. Because euro area deposit insurance funds are still organised, financed, and ultimately back-stopped nationally, their perceived credibility and speed of payout differ across member states. A completed EDIS would narrow cross border differences and dampen the first mover advantage of an uninsured run.
3. Cross-sectoral relationships in the swap market require careful monitoring. Swaps absorbed roughly one-fifth of unrealised losses, but the counterparties are often a small pool of pension funds. Counterparty concentrations amplify propagation of systemic risk; the UK’s 2022 liability-driven investment (LDI) episode served as a warning. Macroprudential surveillance should map the network of swap positions, not just individual bank positions. Furthermore, structural shifts, such as the Netherlands’ move from define-benefit to defined-contribution pension schemes, could erode the pool of counterparties for banks as these schemes transfer duration risk to individual savers.
4. Digital finance compresses run durations. Mobile banking, instant transfers, and viral information flows accelerate withdrawals, as the US regional bank turmoil demonstrated. Real-time monitoring of retail flows and reviewing stressed-outflow assumptions in the liquidity coverage ratio are prudent next steps, which the European Banking Authority is addressing (EBA 2025).

The euro area banking system passed a severe interest rate risk stress test without systemic bank runs. This resilience is explained by diversity in asset durations, funding mixes, hedging strategies, and market structures, which limited losses and absorbed shocks. This diversity increases overall resilience but requires monitoring of pockets of fragility. Differences in hedging via the deposit franchise and derivatives leave some euro area banks significantly more exposed than others. 

Open questions remain. How will digital channels reshape depositor inertia? Will pension reforms shrink the counterparts to banks’ swap hedges? And can pan European deposit insurance be established before the next cycle turns?

Source : VOXeu