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Agreement Reached on the Finalisation of the Basel III Framework

The Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), the oversight body of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, announced that agreement has been reached on the finalisation of Basel III. The agreement improves the comparability of banks’ risk-weighted assets and reinforces the credibility of the bank capital framework. Agreement on these final elements means that key reforms pursued to address the causes of the global financial crisis has now been completed and can be fully implemented.

The reforms include the following elements: 

  • an aggregate output floor, which will ensure that banks' risk-weighted assets (RWAs) generated by internal models are no lower than 72.5% of RWAs as calculated by the Basel III framework's standardised approaches. Banks will also be required to disclose their RWAs based on these standardised approaches. (Advocated for by WOCCU which should help level the competitive playing field for credit unions and other community-based financial cooperatives          
  • a revised standardised approach for credit risk, which will improve the robustness and risk sensitivity of the existing approach;
  • revisions to the internal ratings-based approach for credit risk, where the use of the most advanced internally modelled approaches for low-default portfolios will be limited;
  • revisions to the credit valuation adjustment (CVA) framework, including the removal of the internally modelled approach and the introduction of a revised standardised approach;
  • a revised standardised approach for operational risk, which will replace the existing standardised approaches and the advanced measurement approaches;
  • revisions to the measurement of the leverage ratio and a leverage ratio buffer for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs), which will take the form of a Tier 1 capital buffer set at 50% of a G-SIB's risk-weighted capital buffer; and

A summary of the agreed reforms can be found in the summary document and the final text can be viewed here.  The revised standards will take effect from January 1, 2022 and will be phased in over five years. 

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Bank of International Settlements