In the 1980s the Basel Committee started its work of formulating international standards for the capital adequacy of banking institutions. In 1988 this resulted in the Basel framework - now called the Basel I framework. This is still the basis for the requirements of the size and structure of the capital of banking organisations in more than 100 countries all over the world.
The strong expansion and increasing complexity of the financial markets and banking organisations since the Basel I framework was drawn up have made it necessary to formulate a more sophisticated framework. The Basel Committee therefore took on the drafting of new international standards, and the first proposal was put forward in 1999. This work has proved to be more complex than expected.