From the New Normal to New Abnormal World: Banks’ Risk Profile Shifts in the New Socio-economic Landscape

After a long period of low interest rates, many European banks have let their business model evolve towards a greater diversification of revenues and lower interest rates protection. The sector has proven its resilience during the Covid-19 and the geopolitical crises. Nowadays, with the simultaneous surge of inflation and consciousness about environmental dangers, banks are confronted with an unprecedented challenge. They have to cope with re-emerging or original sources of financial risks. These include stock market risks (due to their off-balance sheet asset management activities), funding risk (due to the pass-through of the rising interest rates on liabilities), ESG risks (on the valuation of the banks’ assets), and credit risk (due to the cost of the climate transition and the tension between the ‘E’ and the ‘S’ dimensions). This will increasingly lead banks to move away from comfortable risk management tools, and develop competences and approaches to deal with uncertainty, potentially for a long period of time.