Building upon these initial studies, the Committee has started extending its analysis to establish a comprehensive picture: for the trading book, the initial analysis has been extended to more complex portfolios, with results expected in the next few months. In parallel, the work on the banking book will extend to the other remaining core asset classes, especially retail portfolios, SMEs and so-called “partial use” exposures (ie exposures that  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  have not been migrated to the internal models). The Committee also foresees extending its work to operational risk, the third core risk type. And once the Committee has done an initial round of assessment, we will need to repeat the exercise periodically to see whether the policy measures that I will discuss shortly are having the desired impact. Further analysis to establish a comprehensive picture will take us into 2015, but this does not, of course, prevent us from taking action in the meantime. It is clear that a problem exists and the Committee is considering a range of supervisory and policy responses – without, I must add, settling on anything definitive just yet. Given the multi-faceted nature of the problem, it is also clear that we will need a multi-faceted response. As there is no silver bullet, we will likely end up with a series of incremental policy and supervisory changes, drawing from the following list:   Most immediately, we will see supervisory action.
Stefan Ingves: Strengthening bank capital – Basel III and beyond Keynote address by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, at the Ninth High Level Meeting for the Middle East & North Africa Region, jointly organised by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the Financial Stability Institute and the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 18 November 2013. *  *  *  As prepared for delivery Good morning everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to speak about what – among the myriad of recent regulatory initiatives – has probably been the most important: strengthening bank capital. Strengthening bank capital is not simply about asking banks to hold more capital. Rather, it is a broader objective that involves ensuring the functioning of the entire capital regime. The Basel Committee’s approach has therefore been to work extensively on the consistent implementation of the regulatory capital framework. The ultimate goal is to implement Basel III so that it strengthens the quantity, quality, consistency and reliability of bank capital ratios around the world. Quantity and quality of capital As you know, a set of requirements designed to raise the quantity and quality of bank capital lies at the heart of the Basel III reforms. Not only were minimum capital requirements raised, but the increases in capital requirements were focused on where they were needed most: in going-concern loss-absorbing capital, or Common Equity Tier 1.