What Drives Banks' and FinTechs' Systemic Risk: An Analysis on Crypto Assets Contagion and Firm‐Specific Characteristics

ABSTRACT This paper studies the determinants of banks' and fintech companies' systemic risk. We adopt both a systemic and firm‐level perspective and consider not only factors traditionally used to explain systemic riskiness, which have never been applied to the fintech sector, but also the new potential source of instability, for both banks and fintech firms, stemming from the crypto market vulnerabilities. We find that crypto market downturns exacerbate both banks' and FinTechs' systemic risk, but they do so in a different way. Then, we prove that, overall, firm‐specific accounting and market‐related indicators exhibit lower power in explaining fintech companies' systemic risk, and that their different impact on banks' and FinTechs' systemic risk is consistent with the different nature of these two groups of firms. This work contributes to the debate on the new threats for the financial system stability associated with the development of the tech‐driven revolution and provides useful insights from the perspective of regulators' and supervisors' efforts to define a proper set of rules and monitoring tools.