More U.S. banks potentially insolvent: Study

In an interview with Yahoo Finance's Rachelle Akuffo, Columbia Business School Professor of Real Estate Tomasz Piskorski said that in a scenario where 50% of depositors are uninsured, "you have about 190 banks in a precarious position meaning the remaining value of assets is not enough to cover the face value of the insured deposit obligation," of course these bank runs can become more pronounced. Piskorski adds that in a scenario where 100% of depositors are uninsured, "almost more than 1,600 banks deemed potentially insolvent."The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said shortly before Silicon Valley Bank's collapse that the market value of U.S. banks’ long-term assets had dropped $620 billion in 2022. New research co-authored by Columbia Business School's professor of real estate Tomasz Piskorski finds that the banking industry’s unrealized losses are now more than three times that, with the system accumulating $2.2 trillion in unrealized losses over the past year.

These paper losses across the U.S. banking sector suggest that other banks with high levels of uninsured depositors and large losses are also prone to solvency crises that could trigger bank runs.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance's Rachelle Akuffo, Piskorski said that in a scenario where 50% of depositors are uninsured, "you have about 190 banks in a precarious position meaning the remaining value of assets is not enough to cover the face value of the insured deposit obligation," of course these bank runs can become more pronounced. Piskorski adds that in a scenario where 100% of depositors are uninsured, "almost more than 1,600 banks deemed potentially insolvent."

Key video moments:
00:01:19 U.S. bank capitalization

00:03:19 Systemically important banks

00:04:22 Risk in the banking system

Watch our full conversation with Tomasz Piskorski here.