Geneviève Vallée is a senior economist in the Financial Intermediation Risk Evaluation (FIRE) team of the Financial Stability Department. In this function, she contributes to analysis and research assessing system-wide vulnerabilities related to financial institutions and non-bank financial intermediaries.
Prior to this current role, Geneviève has also work in the Real Sector Stability and Climate Analysis Team in the Financial Stability Department, and in the Economic Research and Analysis team in the Currency Department. In these roles, she helped advance the analysis and research on household finance, financial system impacts of climate change, and payments.
We analyze the financial statements and stock prices of publicly traded firms incorporated in Canada that report greenhouse gas emissions. We find that these firms primarily use equity financing. We also find that equity investors increasingly account for firms’ emissions when making investment decisions but the impact appears small. This suggests that assets exposed to climate change remain at risk of a sudden repricing.
Natural disasters occur more often than before, potentially exposing households to financial distress. We study the intersection between household financial vulnerabilities and severe weather events.
COVID-19 presents challenges for indebted households. We assess these by drawing parallels between pandemics and natural disasters. Taking into account the financial health of the household sector when the pandemic began, we run model simulations to illustrate how payment deferrals and the labour market recovery will affect mortgage defaults.
We assess the potential financial risks of current and projected flooding caused by extreme weather events in Canada. We focus on the residential real estate secured lending (RESL) portfolios of Canadian financial institutions (FIs) because RESL portfolios are an important component of FIs’ balance sheets and because the assets used to secure such loans are immobile and susceptible to climate-related extreme weather events.
We analyze 40 years’ worth of natural disasters using a local projection framework to assess their impact on provincial labour markets in Canada. We find that disasters decrease hours worked within a week and lower wage growth in the medium run. Our study highlights that disasters affect vulnerable workers through the income channel.
We use detailed consumer credit data to investigate the impact of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, the costliest wildfire disaster in Canadian history, on consumers’ financial stress. We focus on the arrears of insured mortgages because of their important implications for financial institutions and insurers’ business risk and relevant management practices.
Using an exclusive data set of payment times for retail transactions made in Canada, I show that cash is the most time-efficient method of payment (MOP) when compared with payments by debit and credit cards. I model payment efficiency using Cox proportional hazard models, accounting for consumer choice of MOP.
We present key findings of a recent study that evaluates the credit risk that flooding poses to the residential lending activities of Canadian banks and credit unions. Results show that such risk currently appears modest but could become larger with climate change.
In the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s financial institutions allowed households to defer payments on a range of loans. With nearly all of these deferrals having expired, we provide a final update of how these loans have performed through to July 2021.
In the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s financial institutions allowed households to defer payments on a range of loans. With most of these deferrals having expired, we present updated details of how these loans have performed through to March 2021.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s financial institutions have allowed households to defer payments on a range of loans. We present updated details of debt payment deferrals by borrowers through to December 2020.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s financial institutions have allowed borrowers to defer payments on a range of loans. In a series of charts, we investigate what payment deferrals tell us about the financial health of borrowers and the related risks to financial stability.
