November 25, 2016
Global standards for bank capital requirements are being revised again, just as the latest version (Basel III) of global capital requirements is being phased in throughout the EU and other jurisdictions. Some of the revisions, namely those concerning market risk requirements and the treatment of securitisation, were already expected. The Basel III accord, agreed in the midst of the global financial crisis in 2010, contained certain quick fixes that were less sophisticated than the remainder of the standards.
These anticipated revisions are complemented by measures that try to address the large divergence in internal models that banks may use to calibrate the capital requirements. On the one hand, supervisors want to make the simpler standardized approach a more credible alternative to the internal models’ based approach, on the other hand, it tries to reduce the differences between the models with a more restrictive capital floor. The revisions could have considerable consequences for banks’ capital requirements. The revisions are therefore sometimes also thought of as ‘Basel IV’ or the completion of Basel III.
This high-level seminar will discuss the recent proposals and outstanding reforms of the Basel Committee, and will consider the following questions: Do the proposals address the right issues, and go far enough, or even too far? How will they impact Europe’s banks, economy, and society? Are they likely to be transposed in the EU, and if so, will the Basel standards be applied to all banks, or only to the globally significant banks for which they have been designed?