Basel III (or the Third Basel Accord) is a global regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy, stress testing and market liquidity risk agreed upon by the members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 2010–11, and scheduled to be introduced from 2013 until 2018.^[1][2] The third installment of the Basel Accords (see Basel I, Basel II) was developed in response to the deficiencies in financial regulation revealed by the late-2000s financial crisis. Basel III strengthens bank capital requirements and introduces new regulatory requirements on bank liquidity and bank leverage. The OECD estimates that the implementation of Basel III will decrease annual GDP growth by 0.05–0.15%.^[3][4] Critics suggest that greater regulation is responsible for the slow recovery from the late-2000s financial crisis,^[5][6] and that the tighter Basel III requirements may further negatively affect the stability of the financial system by increasing the incentives of banks to game the regulatory framework.^[7]

Overview

Basel III will require banks to hold 4.5% of common equity (up from 2% in Basel II) and 6% of Tier I capital (up from 4% in Basel II) of risk-weighted assets (RWA). Basel III also introduces additional capital buffers, (i) a mandatory capital conservation buffer of 2.5% and (ii) a discretionary countercyclical buffer, which allows national regulators to require up to another 2.5% of capital during periods of high credit growth. In addition, Basel III introduces a minimum leverage ratio and two required liquidity ratios.^[8] The leverage ratio is calculated by dividing Tier 1 capital by the bank's average total consolidated assets;^[9] the banks are expected to maintain the leverage ratio in excess of 3%. The Liquidity Coverage Ratio requires a bank to hold sufficient high-quality liquid assets to cover its total net cash outflows over 30 days; the Net Stable Funding Ratio requires the available amount of stable funding to exceed the required amount of stable funding over a one-year period of extended stress.^[10]

Summary of proposed changes

• First, the quality, consistency, and transparency of the capital base will be raised.
  • Tier 1 capital: the predominant form of Tier 1 capital must be common shares and retained earnings
  • Tier 2 capital instruments will be harmonised
  • Tier 3 capital will be eliminated.^[11]
• Second, the risk coverage of the capital framework will be strengthened.
  • Promote more integrated management of market and counterparty credit risk
  • Add the CVA (credit valuation adjustment)-risk due to deterioration in counterparty's credit rating
  • Strengthen the capital requirements for counterparty credit exposures arising from banks' derivatives, repo and securities financing transactions
  • Raise the capital buffers backing these exposures
  • Reduce procyclicality and
  • Provide additional incentives to move OTC derivative contracts to central counterparties (probably clearing houses)
  • Provide incentives to strengthen the risk management of counterparty credit exposures
  • Raise counterparty credit risk management standards by including wrong-way risk
• Third, the Committee will introduce a leverage ratio as a supplementary measure to the Basel II risk-based framework.
  • The Committee therefore is introducing a leverage ratio requirement that is intended to achieve the following objectives:
    • Put a floor under the build-up of leverage in the banking sector
    • Introduce additional safeguards against model risk and measurement error by supplementing the risk based measure with a simpler measure that is based on gross exposures.
• Fourth, the Committee is introducing a series of measures to promote the build up of capital buffers in good times that can be drawn upon in periods of stress ("Reducing procyclicality and promoting countercyclical buffers").
  • The Committee is introducing a series of measures to address procyclicality:
    • Dampen any excess cyclicality of the minimum capital requirement;
    • Promote more forward looking provisions;
    • Conserve capital to build buffers at individual banks and the banking sector that can be used in stress; and
  • Achieve the broader macroprudential goal of protecting the banking sector from periods of excess credit growth.
    • Requirement to use long term data horizons to estimate probabilities of default,
    • downturn loss-given-default estimates, recommended in Basel II, to become mandatory
    • Improved calibration of the risk functions, which convert loss estimates into regulatory capital requirements.
    • Banks must conduct stress tests that include widening credit spreads in recessionary scenarios.
  • Promoting stronger provisioning practices (forward looking provisioning):
    • Advocating a change in the accounting standards towards an expected loss (EL) approach (usually, EL amount := LGD*PD*EAD).^[12]
• Fifth, the Committee is introducing a global minimum liquidity standard for internationally active banks that includes a 30-day liquidity coverage ratio requirement underpinned by a longer-term structural liquidity ratio called the Net Stable Funding Ratio. (In January 2012, the oversight panel of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued a statement saying that regulators will allow banks to dip below their required liquidity levels, the liquidity coverage ratio, during periods of stress.^[13])
• The Committee also is reviewing the need for additional capital, liquidity or other supervisory measures to reduce the externalities created by systemically important institutions.

As on September 2010, proposed Basel III norms ask for ratios as: 7–9.5% (4.5% + 2.5% (conservation buffer) + 0–2.5% (seasonal buffer)) for common equity and 8.5–11% for Tier 1 capital and 10.5–13% for total capital.^[14]

US implementation

The US Federal Reserve announced in December 2011 that it would implement substantially all of the Basel III rules.^[15] It summarized them as follows, and made clear they would apply not only to banks but to all institutions with more than US$50 billion in assets:

• "Risk-based capital and leverage requirements" including first annual capital plans, conduct stress tests, and capital adequacy "including a tier one common risk-based capital ratio greater than 5 percent, under both expected and stressed conditions" – see scenario analysis on this. A risk-based capital surcharge
• Market liquidity, first based on the US's own "interagency liquidity risk-management guidance issued in March 2010" that require liquidity stress tests and set internal quantitative limits, later moving to a full Basel III regime - see below.
• The Federal Reserve Board itself would conduct tests annually "using three economic and financial market scenarios." Institutions would be encouraged to use at least five scenarios reflecting improbable events, and especially those considered impossible by management, but no standards apply yet to extreme scenarios. Only a summary of the three official Fed scenarios "including company-specific information, would be made public" but one or more internal company-run stress tests must be run each year with summaries published.
• Single-counterparty credit limits to cut "credit exposure of a covered financial firm to a single counterparty as a percentage of the firm's regulatory capital. Credit exposure between the largest financial companies would be subject to a tighter limit."
• "Early remediation requirements" to ensure that "financial weaknesses are addressed at an early stage". One or more "triggers for remediation—such as capital levels, stress test results, and risk-management weaknesses—in some cases calibrated to be forward-looking" would be proposed by the Board in 2012. "Required actions would vary based on the severity of the situation, but could include restrictions on growth, capital distributions, and executive compensation, as well as capital raising or asset sales."^[16]

It was unclear as of December 2011 how these rules would apply to insurance, hedge funds and other large financial players. The announced intent was "to limit the dangers of big financial firms being heavily intertwined."^[15]

Macroeconomic Impact of Basel III

An OECD study^[3] released on 17 February 2011, estimates that the medium-term impact of Basel III implementation on GDP growth is in the range of −0.05% to −0.15% per year. Economic output is mainly affected by an increase in bank lending spreads as banks pass a rise in bank funding costs, due to higher capital requirements, to their customers. To meet the capital requirements effective in 2015 (4.5% for the common equity ratio, 6% for the Tier 1 capital ratio), banks are estimated to increase their lending spreads on average by about 15 basis points. The capital requirements effective as of 2019 (7% for the common equity ratio, 8.5% for the Tier 1 capital ratio) could increase bank lending spreads by about 50 basis points. The estimated effects on GDP growth assume no active response from monetary policy. To the extent that monetary policy will no longer be constrained by the zero lower bound, the Basel III impact on economic output could be offset by a reduction (or delayed increase) in monetary policy rates by about 30 to 80 basis points.^[3]

Key dates

Capital Requirements

Leverage Ratio

Liquidity Requirements

Studies on Basel III

In addition to articles used for references (see References), this section lists links to recent high-quality publicly available studies on Basel III. This section may be updated frequently as Basel III is currently under development.

See also

• Basel I
• Basel II
• Systemically important financial institution
• Operational risk
• Operational risk management

References

External links

• Basel III capital rules
• Basel III liquidity rules