Ten Years After the Financial Crisis in Thailand Chalongphob Sussangkarn and Pakorn Vichyanond
insolvent financial institutions instead of closing them down. This can lead to greater costs to the public in the end. In addition, shoring up financial institutions can lead to moral hazard by inducing financial institutions to undertake businesses that contain excessive
risks.
After the crisis, the government had to provide full guarantee to depositors in order to avoid runs on financial institutions and this has remained to the present. However, it is recognized that a deposit insurance (partial) system needs to be established as a full guarantee system tends to weaken the financial discipline of depositors who focus their attention only on returns while neglecting the quality and stability of the financial institutions that they are dealing with. This can lead to many problems in the longer term.
A draft of the Deposit Insurance Act was approved by the cabinet in November 2004. Principally, the deposit guarantee will be reduced to a maximum of 1 million baht per depositor per financial institution (reduced gradually over a period of 4 years). This would not affect most depositors as deposits of less than 1 million baht constitute 98.6% of all
deposits in the banking system (as of March 2005). This Act should go through parliament in the next year or so.
Supervision of financial institutions
The supervisory framework has been reformed in many important respects to strengthen financial institutions’ ability to handle risks and promote financial stability. Some of the ingredients of supervisory reforms include:
Consolidated supervision. The central authorities will exert their best efforts to oversee all financial institutions and their affiliated units so as to monitor intra-affiliate transactions.
Risk—based supervision. In the past, a micro-oriented financial approach (or usual transaction testing) was adopted to monitor financial institutions. The approach has been broadened to be macro—oriented as well as forward looking. The involved risks are credit risk, market risk, foreign exchange risk, liquidity risk, and operational risk. The BOT will adopt “Basel II” by the end of 2008 consisting of the following three pillars: (a) minimum capital requirements; (b) supervisory review process; and (c) market discipline.
Corporate governance. In recognition of the importance of corporate governance, the BOT has taken several initiatives to improve governance of financial institutions. Examples of these initiatives are financial institution directors’ handbook, structure of banks’ board of directors, fit and proper test, lending to/or investing in related parties, information disclosure, and anti-money laundering.
Accommodate the expansion of financial institutions’ business scope. The BOT has allowed commercial banks to engage in hire purchase, leasing, factoring, private repurchase transactions, new derivative products, and electronic money services. The permission is meant to encourage more competition, full-circuit services, and greater efficiency in the domestic financial market. These business expansions should yield various benefits such
as economy of scale, more innovative products, and better customer satisfaction as well as improved performances of financial institutions.
A still unresolved issue regarding supervision is whether the BOT should still retain the role of supervising banks and finance companies. After the crisis, when much of the blame was attached to the BOT. there was a suggestion that a new agency for financial sector supervision should be established. This appears to be the position of the Ministry of Finance over the past couple of years although the BOT would like to retain the supervision role. This difference needs to be resolved before a revised Bank of Thailand Act and a new Finaua’al Institution Act can be finalized.
With recent experiences of political interference in financial institutions (see next section) and the ability of the BOT to revive much of its credibility and independent stance, it would be difficult to establish a new supervisory agency with enough credibility to gain the confidence of the market. An effective new supervisory agency needs to have sufficient independence from political interference, which is hard to see at this stage. Therefore, it would be better to leave supervision with the BOT and the new BOT Act should be expedited in order to provide legal underpinnings to the new monetary policy regime.
Credit Bureau
Painful experiences in handling bad debts and poor credit management in the past led to the setting up of a Credit Bureau to share credit information about clients. The Credit Bureau Act became effective in March 2003. The Act aims to enhance information sharing among financial institutions in order to improve loan analysis and credit risk management. Simultaneously, the Act protects the owners’ right regarding the accurac