Liquidity management

Liquidity risk is the risk that the Group is unable to meet its obligations when they fall due and to replace funds when they are withdrawn, with consequent failure to repay depositors and fulfil commitments to lend. The risk that it will be unable to do so is inherent in all banking operations and can be impacted by a range of institution specific and market-wide events including, but not limited to, credit events, merger and acquisition activity, systemic shocks and natural disasters.

Liquidity risk management and measurement

Liquidity management within the Group has several components.

Intraday liquidity

The need to monitor, manage and control intraday liquidity in real time is recognised by the Group as a mission critical process: any failure to meet specific intraday commitments would have significant consequences.

The Group policy is that each operation must ensure that it has access to sufficient intraday liquidity to meet any obligations it may have to clearing and settlement systems. Major currency payment flows and payment system collateral are monitored and managed in real time to ensure that at all times there is sufficient collateral to make payments. The Group actively engages in payment system development to help ensure that new payment systems are robust.

Day to day funding

Day to day funding, managed by short term mismatch limits for the next day, week and month which control expected cash flows to ensure that requirements can be met. These requirements include replenishment of funds as they mature or are borrowed by customers. The Group maintains an active presence in global money markets and monitors and manages the wholesale money market capacity for the Group’s name to enable that to happen.

In addition to cash flow management, Treasury also monitors unmatched medium-term assets and the level and type of undrawn lending commitments, the usage of overdraft facilities and the impact of contingent liabilities such as standby letters of credit and guarantees.

Liquid assets

The Group maintains a portfolio of highly marketable assets including UK, US and Euro-area government bonds that can be sold or funded on a secured basis as protection against any unforeseen interruption to cash flow. The Group accesses secured funding markets in these assets on a regular basis to ensure market access. The Group does not rely on committed funding lines for protection against unforeseen interruption to cash flow.

Diversification of liquidity sources

Sources of liquidity are regularly reviewed to maintain a wide diversification by currency, geography, provider, product and term. In addition, to avoid reliance on a particular group of customers or market sectors, the distribution of sources and the maturity profile of deposits are also carefully managed. Important factors in assuring liquidity are competitive rates and the maintenance of depositors’ confidence. Such confidence is based on a number of factors including the Group’s reputation and relationship with those clients, the strength of earnings and the Group’s financial position.

Structural liquidity

An important source of structural liquidity is provided by our core retail deposits in the UK, Europe and Africa, mainly current accounts and savings accounts. Although current accounts are repayable on demand and savings accounts at short notice, the Group’s broad base of customers – numerically and by depositor type – helps to protect against unexpected fluctuations. Such accounts form a stable funding base for the Group’s operations and liquidity needs.

The Group policy is to fund the balance sheet of the retail and commercial bank on a global basis with customer deposits without recourse to the wholesale markets. This provides protection from the liquidity risk of wholesale market funding. The exception to this policy is Absa, which has a large portion of wholesale funding due to the structural nature of the South African financial sector.

Stress tests

Stress testing is undertaken to assess and plan for the impact of various scenarios which may put the Group’s liquidity at risk.

Treasury develops and monitors a range of stress tests on the Group’s projected cash flows. These stress scenarios include Barclays-specific scenarios such an unexpected rating downgrade and operational problems, and external scenarios such as Emerging Market crises, payment system disruption and macro-economic shocks. The output informs both the liquidity mismatch limits and the Group’s contingency funding plan. This is maintained by Treasury and is aligned with the Group and country business resumption plans to encompass decision-making authorities, internal and external communication and, in the event of a systems failure, the restoration of liquidity management and payment systems.

The ability to raise funds is in part dependent on maintaining the Bank’s credit rating. The funding impact of a credit downgrade is regularly estimated. Whilst the impact of a single downgrade may affect the price at which funding is available, the effect on liquidity is not considered material in Group terms.

For further details see contractual obligations and commercial commitments of the Group on page 60.

Recent market events

The second half of last year saw a sustained period of severe stress in international financial markets characterised by increased volatility and impaired liquidity. Issuance of debt, particularly structured credit and mortgage related, fell sharply. The asset-backed commercial paper market was severely disrupted, resulting in the drawn down of committed liquidity lines from banks, while primary issuance of mortgage-backed securities and covered bonds stopped for a time. The repo markets including tri-party were also disrupted with the repo market for corporate debt closing for a time. Term money market funding became difficult to obtain and spreads over official rates widened.

The Group maintained its strong liquidity profile throughout and saw some benefit from a flight to quality in financial markets. Nevertheless, Barclays, like its peers, was affected by the increased volatility and impaired liquidity in financial markets. During this period the Group’s balance sheet expanded due to:

• – The disruption of the Asset Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) market led to liquidity facilities for third party conduits being drawn down.
• – Liquidity facilities were provided to three client SIV-lites which were restructured during the period.
• – A number of loan syndications were delayed and remained on our balance sheet.
• – The demand for ABCP issued by Barclays-sponsored conduits weakened temporarily with the result that a small portion of their funding was provided by Barclays.

These liquidity demands were all successfully managed within overall funding requirements despite occasional disruption of access to some funding markets. Although term funding in interbank markets substantially disappeared, liquidity remained good for Barclays.

Barclays diversified portfolio of highly marketable securities enabled the Group to continue accessing the repo market. Securitisation accounts for a modest proportion of the Group’s funding so the disruption to the securitisation market has not significantly impacted the Group’s liquidity position.

Assessment of liquidity

Barclays liquidity position remains very strong both for its own paper and paper issued by its sponsored conduits. We have benefited from significant inflows of deposits, increased credit lines from counterparties, increased client flows and continued full funding of our conduits.

The markets in 2008 have substantially improved with the passing of the year end, and a degree of normality has returned to the term interbank markets. However we expect there to continue to be dislocations through 2008, and we remain vigilant to ensure that our liquidity profile remains strong.

The FSA published a discussion paper in December 2007 setting out draft proposals for a new quantitative framework for regulating liquidity of banks in the UK in the light of the experiences of 2007. We welcome the FSA intention to update the liquidity regime.