Fragmented market prevents EU banks from financing bloc's ambitions, EBA chair says

By Jakob Van Calster

Sept 24 (Reuters) - Europe's fragmented banking market is preventing lenders from achieving the scale needed to finance the continent's digital, economic-security and defence ambitions, the chair of the European Banking Authority told Reuters.

While European banks remain highly capitalised and continue to post strong profits, they are constrained by a single market that is "not as single as it should be", François-Louis Michaud said in an interview on Wednesday.

"We know that Europe needs to finance all those transformations: digital, environment, demographic, economic security and defence," Michaud said. "It's existential for the future of Europe."

The European Commission is pushing a competitiveness agenda aimed at mobilising investment for digitalisation, defence and economic security, while exploring ways to make cross-border banking easier and deepen the bloc's single market.

EXPENSIVE NATIONAL DIFFERENCES  

Michaud said mergers were not the only solution and that, from the EBA's perspective, greater cross-border lending and financial integration were equally important.

Differences in tax, insolvency and consumer-protection regimes continue to make it expensive for banks to offer standardised products across the bloc and achieve economies of scale, he added. 

As a result, wholesale banking by European financial institutions has dwindled over time, with a growing share of funding provided by non-bank financial institutions, private-credit firms and players outside the bloc.

"Again, it's a question of scale to some extent, banks need to be able to scale up," Michaud said.

He said the EBA aimed to reduce unnecessary red tape, allowing banks and supervisors to focus on the most significant risks rather than "spend too much time and money just for compliance purposes per se".

With the Basel banking reforms now implemented and US regulators moving to ease requirements for some banks, Michaud said momentum was building behind efforts to simplify European rules, including the capital regime, while preserving resilience.

Strengthening European banks is also necessary to compete with US rivals, he added, noting that many American lenders had substantial capital available for expansion and that some were looking beyond their traditional business lines and venturing into new markets. 

(Reporting by Jakob Van Calster and Mateusz Rabiega; Editing by Matt Scuffham)