The Basle Capital Accord of 1988 was a landmark document for the banking industry. It helped increase the capital held by internationally active banks, and created a more level playing field for banks under different jurisdictions. However, there were some weaknesses in the Accord. The most important of these was the practice of assigning the same risk weight to all counterparties in each class, irrespective of the differences in their credit-worthiness. These issues led regulators to propose a more risk sensitive framework. The proposed new Capital Accord will have a great influence on the risk management practices of banks. The new Accord, however, poses challenges to Asian banks and regulators alike. Banks will have to develop more sophisticated risk management capability while regulators will need to build up technical knowledge as well as supervisory resources to validate banks’ risk management systems. As financial markets progress towards greater transparency, the market disciplinary mechanism will reward banks that manage their risks effectively, and penalise those that do not. Good risk management practice is thus even more essential for banks to maintain their competitiveness over the long run. The frequency of shocks has increased. In the past 10 years there has been an average of one shock every year starting from the Gulf War in 1991 to the Latin American crisis of the early nineties and so on down to the Asian Economic Crisis in 1997, the Russian Bond Default Crisis in ’98 and most recently last month, Argentina’s default. The causes of these stress events are wide-ranging.
In addition, these shocks have shown a greater tendency to spread rapidly to other financial markets. The rapidity with which the Asian crisis spread across East Asia in ’97-’98 is a good example. Many of us here today may wish that we have the ability to predict with certainty when the next crisis will strike. It is, however, far more fruitful to adequately prepare ourselves for the inevitable. And that, in short, means enhancing our risk management capability. BIS Review 7/2002  1  Risk Management Initiatives in Singapore MAS will introduce three risk management initiatives to help financial institutions in Singapore better manage the challenges ahead. The first initiative is a MAS guideline that aims to help banks prepare themselves to meet the ill effects of financial crises and shocks. One of the ”defining” features of a financial crisis is that it strikes suddenly and once it has struck, it gives very little time for financial market participants to react. How then can we better prepare ourselves for a crisis? Stress testing offers financial institutions a systematic methodology to prepare for financial crises. Stress testing is based on the old military saying, “the more you sweat in peace the less you bleed in war”. That is, financial institutions that have a comprehensive programme to stress test their portfolios will be better prepared when a stress event occurs.