Basel ii Accord Section 28 to 34

III. Significant minority investments in banking, securities and other
financial entities
 
28. Significant minority investments in banking, securities and other financial entities,
where control does not exist, will be excluded from the banking group’s capital by deduction
of the equity and other regulatory investments.
 
Alternatively, such investments might be, under certain conditions, consolidated on a pro rata basis. For example, pro rata consolidation may be appropriate for joint ventures or where the supervisor is satisfied that the parent is legally or de facto expected to support the entity on a proportionate basis only and the other significant shareholders have the means and the willingness to proportionately support it.
 
The threshold above which minority investments will be deemed significant and be
thus either deducted or consolidated on a pro-rata basis is to be determined by national
accounting and/or regulatory practices. As an example, the threshold for pro-rata inclusion in the European Union is defined as equity interests of between 20% and 50%.
 
29. The Committee reaffirms the view set out in the 1988 Accord that reciprocal crossholdings of bank capital artificially designed to inflate the capital position of banks will be deducted for capital adequacy purposes.
 
IV. Insurance entities
 
30. A bank that owns an insurance subsidiary bears the full entrepreneurial risks of the
subsidiary and should recognise on a group-wide basis the risks included in the whole group.
 
When measuring regulatory capital for banks, the Committee believes that at this stage it is,
in principle, appropriate to deduct banks’ equity and other regulatory capital investments in
insurance subsidiaries and also significant minority investments in insurance entities.
 
Under this approach the bank would remove from its balance sheet assets and liabilities, as well as third party capital investments in an insurance subsidiary.
 
Alternative approaches that can be  applied should, in any case, include a group-wide perspective for determining capital adequacy and avoid double counting of capital.
 
31. Due to issues of competitive equality, some G10 countries will retain their existing
risk weighting treatment (8) as an exception to the approaches described above and introduce risk aggregation only on a consistent basis to that applied domestically by insurance supervisors for insurance firms with banking subsidiaries.9 The Committee invites insurance supervisors to develop further and adopt approaches that comply with the above standards.
 
(8) For banks using the standardised approach this would mean applying no less than a 100% risk weight, while for banks on the IRB approach, the appropriate risk weight based on the IRB rules shall apply to such investments.
 
(9) Where the existing treatment is retained, third party capital invested in the insurance subsidiary (i.e. minority interests) cannot be included in the bank’s capital adequacy measurement.
 
32. Banks should disclose the national regulatory approach used with respect to
insurance entities in determining their reported capital positions.
 
33. The capital invested in a majority-owned or controlled insurance entity may exceed
the amount of regulatory capital required for such an entity (surplus capital). Supervisors may permit the recognition of such surplus capital in calculating a bank’s capital adequacy, under limited circumstances. (10)
 
National regulatory practices will determine the parameters and criteria, such as legal transferability, for assessing the amount and availability of surplus capital that could be recognised in bank capital. Other examples of availability criteria include: restrictions on transferability due to regulatory constraints, to tax implications and to adverse impacts on external credit assessment institutions’ ratings.
 
Banks recognising surplus capital in insurance subsidiaries will publicly disclose the amount of such surplus capital recognised in their capital. Where a bank does not have a full ownership interest in an insurance entity (e.g. 50% or more but less than 100% interest), surplus capital recognised should be proportionate to the percentage interest held. Surplus capital in significant minority-owned insurance entities will not be recognised, as the bank would not be in a position to direct the transfer of the capital in an entity which it does not control.
 
(10) In a deduction approach, the amount deducted for all equity and other regulatory capital investments will be adjusted to reflect the amount of capital in those entities that is in surplus to regulatory requirements, i.e. the amount deducted would be the lesser of the investment or the regulatory capital requirement. The amount representing the surplus capital, i.e. the difference between the amount of the investment in those entities and their regulatory capital requirement, would be risk-weighted as an equity investment. If using an alternative group-wide approach, an equivalent treatment of surplus capital will be made.
 
34. Supervisors will ensure that majority-owned or controlled insurance subsidiaries,
which are not consolidated and for which capital investments are deducted or subject to an
alternative group-wide approach, are themselves adequately capitalised to reduce the
possibility of future potential losses to the bank.
 
Supervisors will monitor actions taken by the subsidiary to correct any capital shortfall and, if it is not corrected in a timely manner, the shortfall will also be deducted from the parent bank’s capital.
     
 

 

 

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