Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0 Author-Name: Mikael Juselius Author-X-Name-First: Mikael Author-X-Name-Last: Juselius Author-Name: Aurea Ponte Marques Author-X-Name-First: Aurea Author-X-Name-Last: Ponte Marques Author-Name: Nikola Tarashev Author-X-Name-First: Nikola Author-X-Name-Last: Tarashev Title: Banks' regulatory risk tolerance Abstract: In managing their capital, banks balance the risk of breaching regulatory requirements against the cost of maintaining and speedily restoring "management" buffers. Using 68 quarters of data on 17 US and 17 euro-area banks, we find systematic reductions in steady-state management buffer targets and attendant rises in regulatory risk tolerance (RRT) following the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). This phenomenon is particularly pronounced at banks with higher capital requirements post GFC. In parallel, banks facing more volatile management buffer shocks set higher management buffer targets, suggesting that RRT is a conscious choice. High-RRT banks tend to respond to a depletion of their management buffers by cutting lending, whereas low-RRT banks reduce the riskiness of their assets in other ways - thus highlighting real-economy effects of capital management strategies. Creation-Date: 2025-09 File-URL: https://www.bis.org/publ/work1287.pdf File-Format: Application/pdf File-Function: Full PDF document File-URL: https://www.bis.org/publ/work1287.htm File-Format: text/html Number: 1287 Keywords: capital management, management buffer target, speed of reversion, regulatory regimes Classification-JEL: G21, G28, E51, G31 Handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:1287