Supervisors in this country have for some time contemplated that only the most risk-sensitive approaches, the Advanced Internal Ratings Based (A-IRB) option for credit risk and the Advanced Measurement approach (AMA) for operational risk, would be applied in the United States. These advanced approaches would be required for only our largest and most complex, internationally active banking organizations--about ten U. S. banks.
However, any other bank that meets the qualifying internal infrastructure standards for risk measurement and management could choose to apply these versions of Basel II. We anticipate another ten or so large banks may opt to do so voluntarily because of the greater risk sensitivity it affords.