Re: Finding Commercial Banks’ Fractional Reserve Ratio

Graham Wright — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 20:46:55 GMT

Bump. Can anyone confirm if I am reading these reports correctly? Or am I oversimplifying?

(Note: The Santander link seems to be broken... so here's another Santander report which has the same figures.)

Finding Commercial Banks’ Fractional Reserve Ratio

Graham Wright — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:31:43 GMT

I’d like to know the fractional-reserve ratios that the big commercial banks have right now. Can this be done by looking at their financial reports? For example, take the Spanish bank Santander. Here is their 2009Q4 financial report.

On page 7 it has “Cash on hand and deposits at central banks” as 34,889 (million euros). I assume this is the correct numerator.

“Customer deposits” are 487,681 (7.15% ratio). Is this the correct denominator? Is it that simple?

HSBC (pg44): $60,655m / $1,159,034m = 5.23% (“Cash and balances at central bank” / “Customer accounts”)

Citigroup (pg131): $25,472m / $835,903m = 3.05% (“Cash and due from banks” / “Total Deposits”)

Economics Questions

Re: Finding Commercial Banks’ Fractional Reserve Ratio

Finding Commercial Banks’ Fractional Reserve Ratio