Stress-Testing Banks’ Profitability: The Case of French Banks

We propose a stress-testing framework to evaluate the sensitivity of banks’ profitability to plausible but severe adverse macroeconomic shocks. Specifically, we test the resilience of French banks’ profitability over the period 1993–2009. First, we identify the macroeconomic and financial variables (GDP growth, interest rate maturity spread, stock market’s volatility) and bank-specific variables (size, capital ratio, ratio of noninterest income to assets) that significantly determine banks’ profitability. Second, we propose macroeconomic stress-testing exercises showing that French banks’ profitability is resilient to major adverse macroeconomic scenarios. Specifically, our findings highlight that even severe recessions would leave the French banking system profitable.