Based on Contingent Claims Analysis, this paper develops a method to monitor systemic risk in the European banking system. Aggregated Distance-to-Default series are generated using option prices information from systemically important banks and the STOXX Europe 600 Banks Index. These indicators provide methodological advantages in monitoring vulnerabilities in the banking system over time: (1) they capture interdependence and joint risk of distress in systemically important banks; (2) their forward-looking feature endow them with early signaling properties compared to traditional approaches in the literature and other market-based indicators; (3) they produce simultaneously smooth and informative long-term signals and quick and clear reaction to market distress and (4) they incorporate additional information through option prices about tail risk and correlation breaks, in line with recent findings in the literature.

In a panel data framework applied to Portfolio Distance-to-Default series of corporate sectors in the euro area, this paper evaluates systemic and idiosyncratic determinants of default risk and examines how distress is transferred in and between the financial and corporate sectors since the early days of the euro. This approach takes into account observed and unobserved common factors and the presence of different degrees of cross-section dependence in the form of economic proximity. This paper contributes to the financial stability literature with a contingent claims approach to a sector-based analysis with a less dominant macro focus while being compatible with existing stress-testing methodologies in the literature. A disaggregated analysis of the different corporate and financial sectors allows for a more detailed assessment of specificities in terms of risk profile, i.e. heterogeneity of business models, risk exposures and interaction with the rest of the macro environment.

Economic contractions are generally associated with increases in NPL ratios. However, despite the common assumption used in the empirical literature of homogenous impact across banks, the strength of this relationship is often bank-specific, and imposing homogeneity may lead to over- or underestimating the resilience of the financial system to macroeconomic woes. We introduce a three-stage approach to generate forecasts of macro-financial variables and project non-performing loans (NPLs) in a way that accounts for banks’ heterogeneous reactions to macro-financial shocks in a dynamic context and for potential cross-sectional dependence across banks caused by common shocks. An application to Ecuador suggests that both substantial heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence are present and that should be taken into account when trying to anticipate inflections in the quality of the portfolio.