Broader use of saving products among people can make deposit funding of the banking system more resilient

Can broader use of formal saving tools among people boost the stability of bank deposit funding? We examine this question using the cross-country data on the use of formal savings from the Global Findex and the bank deposit growth from the International Financial Statistics. We run a cross-country regression using the averages over the 2007-10 period while controlling for relevant covariates such as the average level of development and existence of deposit insurance. We further condition on the access to deposits by firms using the Enterprise Survey data. The experience from the global financial crisis suggests that when a greater share of people use formal saving products, the country's banking system enjoys more stable deposit funding.