Study On The Off-balance Sheet Activities Development Of Commercial Banks

The paper is focused on the problem of the development of Off-balance Sheet Activities (OBS) for commercial banks. The development of OBS marks a dramatic change of the connotation and nature of business operation of commercial banks, which is from traditional financial intermediary to financial service sector that has a broader meaning. Under the guide of the theoretical framework of financial intermediary theory and financial innovation theory, combining the analysis on the international development experience of OBS and the existing supervision system mode, the thesis probes into the problems, background, influences and causes from the angle of researches and practices. Some development strategies and policy suggestions are put forward to make a normative development of OBS for commercial banks.As revealed by the study, the following defects exist in the development of OBS: (1) small scale and low level; (2) simplicity of business norm; (3) irregularity of operation, such as severity of blind competition, insufficiency of risk exposure and irregular operation; (4) imbalance of development, which can be described as three aspects at large: the contradiction of supply and demand, the backwardness of medium-small commercial banks and the different evolution level according to different region.The developing of OBS is confronted with three realistic backgrounds, i.e. the admission of WTO, universal business operation trend and the marketing of interest making. All the three are both opportunities and challenges for commercial banks and make it urgent to develop OBS.Such defects may unfavorably affect many aspects of economy such as bank itself, clients and national economy. The causes may be explained as follows: the lagging of legal construction; the flaw of present supervision system; unsoundness of market environment; the lagging of construction of banks itself etc.As to price-making mechanism of OBS, some basic principles must be obeyed and value-based mode should be employed. We should attach more importance to following business at present time: credit card and international business; personal financing business; investment banking business; financial derivative and Asset-backed Securitization business. In order to promote the development of OBS normatively, many polices are proposed: (1) Perfect the policy environment; (2) Enhance external supervision; (3) Optimize the market environment; (4) Deepen the reform of commercial banks; (5) Taking full advantage of all sorts of resources and combining comparative advantage, make development strategies.