Deposit Insurance in Times of Crises: Safe Haven or Regulatory Arbitrage? (RM/15/026-revised-)

This paper examines the impact of deposit insurance (DI) schemes on bilateral cross-border deposits. Our results suggest that not only the existence of explicit DI, but also DI design features, which reflect its credibility, have an impact on cross-border deposits. Relative differences between reporting and depositor countries also matter. In times of crises, depositors rely more on DI in general, but DI acts primarily as a “Safe Haven” rather than enabling “Regulatory Arbitrage”. During the global financial crisis of 2008/09 the emergency actions of bank country governments, which supply and maintain these safe havens, have led to substantial relocations of cross-border deposits. These results suggest that un-coordinated policy actions matter in times of crises and harmonization of DI schemes could have stabilizing effects on the allocation of cross-border deposits.