Interest rate risk on bank balance sheets
Interest rate risk appears on just 11 recent papers in the finance journals, only one of them in July–September 2026, although unrealized losses on bank bond holdings triggered the 2023 bank failures. Which banks still carry large unrealized losses, and does supervision now see them?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 13 papers carry an interest-rate-risk, held-to-maturity or unrealized-loss keyword (9 in finance journals, 3 in economics), and only one of them was published in July–September 2026. "Bank failures" appears on 12 papers. Bank runs and deposit insurance are rising topics, but the balance-sheet side of the 2023 failures is barely studied.
Questions
- How much of the banking system's unrealized losses remain after rates stayed high, and are they concentrated in banks with uninsured deposits?
- Did banks lengthen or shorten the duration of their bond holdings after 2023, and did the use of hedges change?
- Would reporting held-to-maturity securities at fair value have changed depositors' behaviour?
Data that could help
Call Reports and FR Y-9C filings, which report securities by maturity bucket and accounting classification, deposit composition and bank stock prices.
Next step
Estimate each US bank's unrealized losses from its Call Report maturity buckets for 2022–2025 and relate them to deposit outflows and equity prices.