Nº 21-54: Economic Support during the COVID Crisis. Quantitative Easing and Lending Support Schemes in the UK

We investigate how the interaction of the Brexit and COVID waves of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing with the leverage ratio capital requirements or government COVID lending support schemes affected bank business lending. We find that the former QE programme was particularly successful in increasing lending to nonfinancial businesses, except for QE-banks subject to the UK leverage ratio, suggesting that the latter ratio incentivized QE-banks to lend to business anyway. The government schemes helped expand lending especially to SMEs post QE COVID, indicating that complementing QE with other credit easing programmes can improve its impact on lending to the real economy. During COVID-stress, changes to the UK leverage ratio supported better market-making in securities markets, and additional QE liquidity boosted stronger repo market intermediation.