4  See the BIS publication “Consultative Document -Reducing variation in credit risk-weighted assets – constraints on the use of internal model approaches”, http://www.bis.org/bcbs/publ/d362.pdf  9 [12]  Time to start a review of Sweden's special national requirements Some of the special Swedish requirements have arisen over the years following the financial crisis, as Finansinspektionen and other Swedish authorities have assessed that Swedish banks need more capital than the current minimum requirement supplies. These special Swedish requirements are thus not the result of international agreements. It is therefore reasonable that we should review our current special national requirements when Basel III will be introduced in full in Sweden, especially in the perspective that Basel III will imply higher minimum requirements of the major Swedish banks than before. Although no decision has yet been made on when Basel III shall be fully implemented in Sweden, my assessment is that we will have plenty of time to review our special national requirements and assess what level they should be at when Basel III is introduced in Sweden. One conclusion of this analysis may be that today’s CET 1 capital requirement of 18 per cent of risk-weighted assets for the major Swedish banks in total needs to be changed in future. Under these circumstances it is too early to make any precise analysis of how, for instance, Swedish GDP will develop or how borrowers’ interest rates will be affected by the coming changes in the regulations.
Given this, there is a lot of international work on trying to alleviate the consequences for the economy when the banking system is subject to shocks. For instance, several countries have developed a framework within the Financial Stability Board (FSB) for how banks in distress can be wound up without too much impact on taxpayers. This framework has been introduced through an EU directive into Swedish legislation in the act on resolution. I welcome these standards. But in addition to these standards regarding resolution, it is important that we conduct global crisis prevention work that reduces the risks that banks will suffer problems. And as I mentioned, this work is largely done within the scope of the Basel Committee. Why are globally-harmonised capital requirements a good idea? Much of the Basel Committee's more than forty years of work has concerned capital levels in the banks, and for good reasons. Then as now, our assessment is that wellcapitalised banks benefit financial stability and contribute to a positive development in society. Banks that are well-capitalised are more resilient to losses and have greater capacity to obtain market funding during times of financial unease. In other words, the risk of a financial crisis declines if the banks are well-capitalised. Up until the end of the 1980s, the regulatory frameworks for banks’ capital levels were relatively different in different countries. In many areas, the existing capital requirements were considered outdated and in need of revision.