This paper describes an analysis of the effects of both foreign exchange (FX) risk and interest rate risk on installments of the housing FX loan using classic comparative statics approach. By focusing on sensitivity of annuity with respect to infinitesimal changes of parameters it presents the impact of the interest rate and FX rate on installments in terms of their shares of the total outstanding in foreign currency, and illustrates using values, in Polish zlotys, for three example loans extended during the period when Poland saw its most intensive FX lending. This analysis represents an attempt to answer a question frequently raised in this country of late: does the issue of debt servicing housing FX loans matter for borrowers and therefore could affect banks’ loan portfolio quality?

This paper attempts to find out whether better quality of investor protection matters for the effect of capital ratio on loan growth of large EU banks in 1996-2011. We focus on several measures of the quality of investor protection with a proven track record in the banking literature, i.e.: anti-self-dealing index, ex-ante-control and ex-post-control of anti-self-dealing indices, and creditor protection rights index. Our results show that better investor protection decreases the procyclical impact of capital on lending. This effect is statistically significant for the ex-post-control index. This is consistent with the view that better shareholders rights reduces bank risk-taking, in particular during economic booms, which results in weakened sensitivity of bank lending to capital ratios in economic downturns. This effect holds for both unconsolidated and consolidated data and is robust to sensitivity checks.