Do creditors punish weak banks? Evidence from Indian urban cooperative banks’ failure

This study empirically assesses two critical hypotheses related to market discipline: (i) Do depositors penalize underperforming banks by withdrawing their deposits? and (ii) Do well-informed peer banks reduce lending to weak banks? Based on the annual standalone balance sheet data of urban cooperative banks in India from 1990 to 2020, our findings suggest that: (i) the behaviour of savings and current depositors is not significantly affected by the bank risk; (ii) the risk-taking behaviour of the banks significantly influences term deposits; and (iii) other informed peer banks and financial institutions do respond to the riskiness of peer banks. Additionally, our research revealed a positive association between the size of assets and the deposit growth rate, indicating that depositors are responsive to the influence of the “too-big-to-fail” phenomenon. Moreover, depositors are sensitive to banks’ non-interest expenditures. Banks with higher non-interest expenditures pay a higher interest rate to retain depositors, thus suggesting the presence of weak market discipline.