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When the Fed Raises Rates, Are Banks Less Profitable?

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  • Pascal Paul

Abstract

Banks limit their interest rate risk exposure by issuing adjustable-rate loans and protect their funding costs by slowly adjusting deposit rates. These actions allow banks to maintain largely stable profit margins even if monetary policy tightens unexpectedly. Evidence from the pre-pandemic tightening cycle suggests that bank profit margins could increase rather than decline over the coming months. However, the slow adjustment of rates that banks pay on deposits may result in people moving their savings, leading to a reallocation of assets away from the regulated banking system.

Suggested Citation

  • Pascal Paul, 2022. "When the Fed Raises Rates, Are Banks Less Profitable?," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, vol. 2022(35), pages 1-06, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:95347
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Itamar Drechsler & Alexi Savov & Philipp Schnabl, 2021. "Banking on Deposits: Maturity Transformation without Interest Rate Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(3), pages 1091-1143, June.
    2. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2018. "High-Frequency Identification of Monetary Non-Neutrality: The Information Effect," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1283-1330.
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    Cited by:

    1. Sarto, Andrés & Wang, Olivier, 2026. "The secular decline in interest rates and the rise of shadow banks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).

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