Purpose

In this paper the interconnectedness among financial institutions and the level of systemic risks of four types of Chinese financial institutions are investigated.

Design/methodology/approach

By the means of RAS algorithm, the interconnection among financial institutions are illustrated. Different methods, including Linear Granger, Systemic impact index (SII), vulnerability index (VI), CoVaR, and MES are used to measure the systemic risk exposures across different institutions.

Findings

The results illustrate that big banks are more interconnected and hold the biggest scales of inter-bank transactions in the financial network. The institutions which have larger size tend to have more connection with others. Insurance and security companies contribute more to the systemic risk where as other institutions, such as trusts, financial companies, etc. may bring about severe loss and endanger the financial system as a whole.

Practical implications

Since other institutions with low levels of regulation may bring about higher extreme loss and suffer the whole system, it deserves more attention by regulators considering the contagion of potential risks in the financial system.

Originality/value

This study builds a valuable contribution by examine the systemic risks from the perspectives of both interconnection and tail risk measures. Furthermore; Four types financial institutions are investigated in this paper.