Shadow banking system in general concept and a research on shadow banking for Turkey

Shadow banking, which is described that a banking system has close interrelations with traditional banking system, responsible for off balance sheet activities, in general offers regulatory arbitrage, tax arbitrage, and additional funding advantages to traditional banking system. Shadow banking system has been emerged due to constrains of profit margin and weaker competitive advantages for banks in the financial market whose nature was changed by regulations. The main instruments of shadow banking system are hedge funds, money market mutual funds, derivative instruments and repo (repurchasing agreements) markets. Shadow banking, which is a bridge between commercial banks and investment banks, unregulated, has had dominance in securitization market. Commercial banks found more funds with shadow banking transactions and thus lend more credit than standard.Moreover, risk pervades whole financial system instead of one institution by the instrument of shadow banking As a result, banks had more activity/transaction volume and more profitability in the financial market. Researching shadow banking system became necessary for Turkish banking system, which gained worldwide reputation nowadays. As a matter of fact that researching shadow banking system for Turkish banking system is crucial for investment climate in Turkey, which has important place amongst emerging markets. In the research, shadow banking system?s main outline was tried to drawn. The existence of shadow banking system is researched with off balance sheet transactions. In order to research existence of the shadow banking in Turkey, off balance sheet transactions that are guarantees and warranties, commitments, derivative financial instruments, custody and pledged securities and return on equity relations were investigated between 2006 and 2011. According to the results, there is shadow banking in Turkish banking system.