EBA’s annual Bank funding plans report shows plans to issue more debt instruments in the coming years intended to counterbalance expected decline in central bank funding  

The European Banking Authority (EBA) today published its annual Funding Plans Report. 159 banks submitted their funding plans for a forecast period from 2022 to 2024. The Report highlights strong deposit growth and increase of public sector sources of funding in 2021. The plans show banks’ intentions to increase market-based funding over forecast period, while the gap between planned debt issuances and maturing targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO) in the coming two years remains significant. 

• Banks’ total assets increased by 3% in 2021, mainly driven by a surge in cash balances at central banks. This reflects loan volume growth as well as central bank support measures in response to the pandemic.    
• Banks’ use of public sector funding such as the European Central Bank's (ECB’s) TLTRO increased in 2021. Public sector funding contributed almost 9% of banks’ total funding in 2021. Banks forecast that this share to decline to about 2.5% of total funding by 2023.  
• Strong deposit growth continued in 2021. By the end of the year deposits represented 76% of banks’ total funding. For the period 2022 to 2024 banks are expecting deposit growth to decline to 3% per year.  
• The funding plans indicate that banks intend to increase reliance on market-based funding by 11% over the three-year forecast period. Despite this planned increase, the gap between debt issuances and maturing TLTRO volumes remains significant for 2023 and 2024. 
• The difference between interest rates on loans - to both households and non-financial corporations – and deposits has continued to decline. The average difference was 2.04% in 2021 compared to 2.22% one year earlier. Most banks expect that these spreads will increase during 2022. 
• It remains to be seen to what extent banks will further adjust their funding plans given the notable change in economic- and market conditions since banks submitted data for this report. 

Notes to editors 

Key indicators have been visualised in a dynamic way. To facilitate the navigation, here is the full list of key indicators that you can find in the graphs: 

Slide 1: Evolution of actual and planned asset composition (EUR trillion). 

Slide 2: Growth expectations for selected liability classes. 

Slide 3: Growth expectations for deposits from households and NFCs by country and for the EU (2022-2024). 

Slide 4: Net issuance volumes for unsecured debt instruments (EUR billion). 

The figures included in the Funding Plans Report are based on a sample of 159 banks as of December 2021, covering more than 80% of the EU/EEA banking sector by total assets.