Basel ii Accord - Sections 1 to 5

Introduction
 
1. This report presents the outcome of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s
(“the Committee”) (1) work over recent years to secure international convergence on revisions
to supervisory regulations governing the capital adequacy of internationally active banks.
 
Following the publication of the Committee’s first round of proposals for revising the capital
adequacy framework in June 1999, an extensive consultative process was set in train in all
member countries and the proposals were also circulated to supervisory authorities
worldwide.
 
The Committee subsequently released additional proposals for consultation in
January 2001 and April 2003 and furthermore conducted three quantitative impact studies
related to its proposals. As a result of these efforts, many valuable improvements have been
made to the original proposals. The present paper is now a statement of the Committee
agreed by all its members. It sets out the details of the agreed Framework for measuring
capital adequacy and the minimum standard to be achieved which the national supervisory
authorities represented on the Committee will propose for adoption in their respective
countries.
 
This Framework and the standard it contains have been endorsed by the Central
Bank Governors and Heads of Banking Supervision of the Group of Ten countries.
 
(1) The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is a committee of banking supervisory authorities that was established by the central bank governors of the Group of Ten countries in 1975. It consists of senior representatives of bank supervisory authorities and central banks from Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It usually meets at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, where its permanent Secretariat is located.
 
2. The Committee expects its members to move forward with the appropriate adoption
procedures in their respective countries. In a number of instances, these procedures will
include additional impact assessments of the Committee’s Framework as well as further
opportunities for comments by interested parties to be provided to national authorities.
 
The Committee intends the Framework set out here to be available for implementation as of yearend 2006. However, the Committee feels that one further year of impact studies or parallel
calculations will be needed for the most advanced approaches, and these therefore will be
available for implementation as of year-end 2007. More details on the transition to the
revised Framework and its relevance to particular approaches are set out in paragraphs 45
to 49.
 
3. This document is being circulated to supervisory authorities worldwide with a view to
encouraging them to consider adopting this revised Framework at such time as they believe
is consistent with their broader supervisory priorities.
 
While the revised Framework has been designed to provide options for banks and banking systems worldwide, the Committee acknowledges that moving toward its adoption in the near future may not be a first priority for all non-G10 supervisory authorities in terms of what is needed to strengthen their supervision.
 
Where this is the case, each national supervisor should consider carefully the benefits of the revised Framework in the context of its domestic banking system when developing a timetable and approach to implementation.
 
4. The fundamental objective of the Committee’s work to revise the 1988 Accord (2) has
been to develop a framework that would further strengthen the soundness and stability of the
international banking system while maintaining sufficient consistency that capital adequacy
regulation will not be a significant source of competitive inequality among internationally
active banks.
 
The Committee believes that the revised Framework will promote the adoption
of stronger risk management practices by the banking industry, and views this as one of its
major benefits. The Committee notes that, in their comments on the proposals, banks and
other interested parties have welcomed the concept and rationale of the three pillars
(minimum capital requirements, supervisory review, and market discipline) approach on
which the revised Framework is based.
 
More generally, they have expressed support for improving capital regulation to take into account changes in banking and risk management practices while at the same time preserving the benefits of a framework that can be applied as uniformly as possible at the national level.
 
(2) International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards, Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (July 1988), as amended.
 
5. In developing the revised Framework, the Committee has sought to arrive at
significantly more risk-sensitive capital requirements that are conceptually sound and at the
same time pay due regard to particular features of the present supervisory and accounting
systems in individual member countries.
 
It believes that this objective has been achieved.
 
The Committee is also retaining key elements of the 1988 capital adequacy framework,
including the general requirement for banks to hold total capital equivalent to at least 8% of
their risk-weighted assets; the basic structure of the 1996 Market Risk Amendment regarding
the treatment of market risk; and the definition of eligible capital.

 

    
 

 

 

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