With a few hundred accounting experts here in the audience, I won’t need to explain why a bank that maintains adequate loan loss allowances and robust capital buffers, is doing itself a favour. This serves that bank as well as financial stability.
As to the capital buffers, I take it that most of you are aware that both Basel III and Solvency II contain stricter requirements for buffers than the former versions of these solvency regimes. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  For banks, Basel III specifies that the minimum levels be increased and expanded with socalled capital conservation and countercyclical buffers.