| Basel Framework International regulatory standards for banks |
|---|
| Background |
| Pillar 1: Regulatory capital |
| Pillar 2: Supervisory review |
| Pillar 3: Market disclosure |
| Business and Economics Portal |
Under the Basel II guidelines, banks are allowed to use their own estimated risk parameters for the purpose of calculating regulatory capital. This is known as the internal ratings-based (IRB) approach to capital requirements for credit risk. Only banks meeting certain minimum conditions, disclosure requirements and approval from their national supervisor are allowed to use this approach in estimating capital for various exposures. [1] [2]
Reforms to the internal ratings-based approach to credit risk are due to be introduced under the Basel III: Finalising post-crisis reforms standards.
The IRB approach relies on a bank's own assessment of its counterparties and exposures to calculate capital requirements for credit risk. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision explained the rationale for adopting this approach in a consultative paper issued in 2001. [3] Such an approach has two primary objectives -
To use this approach, a bank must take two major steps:
The regulatory capital for credit risk is then calculated as 8% of the total RWA under Basel II.
Each banking exposure is categorized into one of these broad asset classes:
These corporate and retail classes are further divided into five and three sub-classes, respectively. In addition, both these classes have a separate treatment for purchased receivables, which might apply subjectivity to certain conditions.
The following paragraphs describe the asset classes in detail.
An exposure to a corporation, partnership or proprietorship falls under this category. Some special guidelines may apply if the corporation is small or medium-sized entity (SME). As noted above, there are five sub-classes of specialized lending under this asset class -
This generally refers to a loan made to a particular country. Under the Basel II guidelines, this class also includes the central banks of various countries, certain public sector enterprises (PSEs) and the multilateral development banks (MDBs) that meet the criteria for a 0% risk weight under the standardized approach.
Loans made to banks or securities firms subject to regulatory capital requirements come under this category. Certain domestic PSEs or MDBs that do not meet the criteria for a 0% risk weight under the standardized approach also fall in this category.
Loans made to individuals fall under this category. Credit cards, overdrafts or residential mortgages are some of the common retail lending products treated as part of this category in the IRB approach. Subject to a maximum of 1 million euros, exposures to small businesses managed as retail exposures also fall under this category.
Retail exposures are usually not managed by the bank on an individual basis for risk rating purposes, but as groups of exposures with similar risk characteristics. The sub-classes of exposures falling into this category are -
Direct ownership interests in the assets and income of a financial institution, or indirect interests through for example derivatives come under this category. For an exposure to qualify under this category, the return of the funds invested on the equities can be only realized through their sale or by liquidation of the issuer of these equities.
To calculate capital requirements for all banking exposures, there are three main elements
The accord provides two broad approaches that a bank can follow: [5]
In this approach, banks calculate their own PD parameter while the other risk parameters are provided by the bank's national supervisor
In this approach, banks calculate their own risk parameters subject to meeting some minimum guidelines.
However, the foundation approach is not available for Retail exposures.
For equity exposures, calculation of risk-weighted assets not held in the trading book can be calculated using two different ways: a PD/LGD approach or a market-based approach.
To adopt the IRB approach and its continued use, a bank must satisfy certain minimum requirements that it can demonstrate to the national supervisor. They are described in the following twelve sub-sections.
The minimum requirements state that estimates of risk parameters must
The risk parameters must also be consistent with their use in making risk management decisions.
The minimum requirements apply to all asset classes.
To adopt the IRB approach, a bank must demonstrate ongoing compliance with the minimum requirements. If a bank does not satisfy the minimum requirements at any point of time, they must submit to the supervisor a plan outlining how they intend to return to compliance along with definite timelines. Supervisors may take appropriate action or require the banks to hold additional capital in case of non-compliance.
Rating system refers to the entire mathematical and technological infrastructure a bank has put in place to quantify and assign the risk parameters. Banks are allowed to use multiple ratings systems for different exposures, but the methodology of assigning an exposure to a particular rating system must be logical and documented; banks are not allowed to use a particular rating system to minimize regulatory capital requirements.
A rating system must be designed based on two dimensions
For retail exposures, delinquent exposures should be identified separately from those that are not.
A rating system typically assigns a borrower to a particular grade based on their probability of default. To avoid excessive concentration of borrowers in one particular grade, a bank must have a minimum of seven borrower grades for non-defaulted exposures and one for those that default. For retail exposures, banks should be able to quantify the risk parameters for each pool of exposures.
Rating systems must be clear and well documented. They must enable a third party, like internal audit or independent reviewer, to replicate the assignment of ratings and their appropriateness. All relevant up to date information must be used in the assignment of ratings. A bank must be conservative in its estimates if there is a lack of data to accurately quantify the risk parameters.
Credit scoring models are allowed to play a role in the estimation of the risk parameters as long as sufficient human judgment not captured by the model is taken into account to assign the final rating to a borrower. The bank must also satisfy the supervisor that the data used to build these models are representative of its exposures, and there is no distortion in the calculation of regulatory capital due to the use of these models. Banks must also have in place a system governing the use of these models and whether they are fit for purpose for ongoing use; such a system must consider the stability of the model as well as its ability to predict default accurately.
The requirements state that for corporate, sovereign or bank exposures all borrowers and guarantors must be assigned a rating as part of the loan approval process. The process by which a rating is assigned and the actual ratings assigned must be reviewed periodically by a body independent of those making loan approval decisions. Ratings must be reviewed at least once a year.
All data relevant to assignment of ratings must be collected and maintained by the bank. The data collected is not only beneficial for improving the credit risk management process of the bank on an ongoing basis, but also required for necessary supervisory reporting.
Banks are also required to regularly stress test their rating systems considering economic downturn scenarios, market risk based events or liquidity conditions that may increase the level of capital held by the bank. These stress tests should not only consider the relevant internal data of the bank, but also macro-economic factors that might affect the accuracy of the rating system.
The rating systems should be approved by the Bank's board of directors and they should be familiar with the management reports created as part of the rating systems. Senior management should regularly review the rating system and identify areas needing improvement. Reporting is required to include
Banks must have independent functions responsible for development and ongoing monitoring of the rating systems.
An internal audit function, or equally independent function, must review the rating system at least once a year and the findings from such a review must be documented.
Banks must satisfy the 'use test', [6] which means that the ratings must be used internally in the risk management practices of the bank. A rating system solely devised for calculating regulatory capital is not acceptable. While banks are encouraged to improve their rating systems over time, they are required to demonstrate the use of risk parameters for risk management for at least three years prior to obtaining qualification.
Overall requirements
Definition of default
Loss, when estimating LGD, is economic loss and not accounting loss. This means that all material direct and indirect costs, as well as recoveries, must be discounted back to the point of default. The bank must clearly demonstrate the choice of the discount rate to the supervisor.
Important considerations in quantifying risk parameters include:
Banks must have well-defined processes to estimate the accuracy and consistency of their rating systems.
Banks using the foundation approach use supervisory estimates of EADpreCCF and LGD. However, they must meet the minimum requirements of the standardized approach for recognition of eligible collateral.
Leases other than those that expose the bank to residual value risk are accorded the same treatment as exposures collateralised by the same type of collateral.
The capital charge for equity exposures is defined in the Basel Accord as follows -
The capital charge is equivalent to the potential loss on the institution’s equity portfolio arising from an assumed instantaneous shock equivalent to the 99th percentile, one-tailed confidence interval of the difference between quarterly returns and an appropriate risk-free rate computed over a long-term sample period.
Further requirements are summarized below -
Banks must meet the disclosure requirements as mandated by the third pillar of the Basel framework. Failure to meet these requirements makes the bank ineligible to use the IRB approach.
A bank is required to compare the total expected losses with the total eligible provisions. If the expected loss amount is less than the provisions, the supervisor must consider if this is a true picture of reality, and, if so, then include the difference in Tier II capital. The expected losses for equity exposures under the PD/LGD approach is deducted 50% from Tier I and 50% from Tier II capital.
Credit risk is the possibility of losing a lender holds due to a risk of default on a debt that may arise from a borrower failing to make required payments. In the first resort, the risk is that of the lender and includes lost principal and interest, disruption to cash flows, and increased collection costs. The loss may be complete or partial. In an efficient market, higher levels of credit risk will be associated with higher borrowing costs. Because of this, measures of borrowing costs such as yield spreads can be used to infer credit risk levels based on assessments by market participants.
Basel II is the second of the Basel Accords, which are recommendations on banking laws and regulations issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. It is now extended and partially superseded by Basel III.
In finance, leverage, also known as gearing, is any technique involving borrowing funds to buy an investment.
Financial risk is any of various types of risk associated with financing, including financial transactions that include company loans in risk of default. Often it is understood to include only downside risk, meaning the potential for financial loss and uncertainty about its extent.
Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) is also known as Capital to Risk (Weighted) Assets Ratio (CRAR), is the ratio of a bank's capital to its risk. National regulators track a bank's CAR to ensure that it can absorb a reasonable amount of loss and complies with statutory Capital requirements.
The term Advanced IRB or A-IRB is an abbreviation of advanced internal ratings-based approach, and it refers to a set of credit risk measurement techniques proposed under Basel II capital adequacy rules for banking institutions.
The term Foundation IRB or F-IRB is an abbreviation of foundation internal ratings-based approach, and it refers to a set of credit risk measurement techniques proposed under Basel II capital adequacy rules for banking institutions.
Probability of default (PD) is a financial term describing the likelihood of a default over a particular time horizon. It provides an estimate of the likelihood that a borrower will be unable to meet its debt obligations.
The term standardized approach refers to a set of credit risk measurement techniques proposed under Basel II, which sets capital adequacy rules for banking institutions.
Loss given default or LGD is the share of an asset that is lost if a borrower defaults.
Exposure at default or (EAD) is a parameter used in the calculation of economic capital or regulatory capital under Basel II for a banking institution. It can be defined as the gross exposure under a facility upon default of an obligor.
A structured investment vehicle (SIV) is a non-bank financial institution established to earn a credit spread between the longer-term assets held in its portfolio and the shorter-term liabilities it issues. They are simple credit spread lenders, frequently "lending" by investing in securitizations, but also by investing in corporate bonds and funding by issuing commercial paper and medium term notes, which were usually rated AAA until the onset of the financial crisis. They did not expose themselves to either interest rate or currency risk and typically held asset to maturity. SIVs differ from asset-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations in that they are permanently capitalized and have an active management team.
The CAMELS rating is a supervisory rating system originally developed in the U.S. to classify a bank's overall condition. It is applied to every bank and credit union in the U.S. and is also implemented outside the U.S. by various banking supervisory regulators.
Expected loss is the sum of the values of all possible losses, each multiplied by the probability of that loss occurring.
Risk-weighted asset is a bank's assets or off-balance-sheet exposures, weighted according to risk. This sort of asset calculation is used in determining the capital requirement or Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) for a financial institution. In the Basel I accord published by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the Committee explains why using a risk-weight approach is the preferred methodology which banks should adopt for capital calculation:
Credit valuation adjustments (CVAs) are accounting adjustments made to reserve a portion of profits on uncollateralized financial derivatives. They are charged by a bank to a risky counterparty to compensate the bank for taking on the credit risk of the counterparty during the life of the transaction. These most common transaction types are interest rate derivatives, foreign exchange derivatives, and combinations thereof. The reserved profits can be viewed mathematically as the net present value of the credit risk embedded in the transaction.
Basel III is the third Basel Accord, a framework that sets international standards for bank capital adequacy, stress testing, and liquidity requirements. Augmenting and superseding parts of the Basel II standards, it was developed in response to the deficiencies in financial regulation revealed by the financial crisis of 2007–08. It is intended to strengthen bank capital requirements by increasing minimum capital requirements, holdings of high quality liquid assets, and decreasing bank leverage.
The credit conversion factor (CCF) is a coefficient in the field of credit rating. It is the ratio between the additional amount of a loan used in the future and the amount that could be claimed.
The Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB), is a set of proposals by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision for a new market risk-related capital requirement for banks.
The standardized approach for counterparty credit risk (SA-CCR) is the capital requirement framework under Basel III addressing counterparty risk for derivative trades. It was published by the Basel Committee in March 2014. See Basel III: Finalising post-crisis reforms.