Basel II

pillar 1 : Minimum Capital Requiremnet ( credit risk, operational risk,Market Risk)

pillar 2 : Supervisory Review Process

pillar 3 : MArket Discipline

Basel II
Bank for International Settlements Basel Accords Basel I Basel II Basel III
Background
Banking Monetary policy Central bank Risk Risk management Regulatory capital Tier 1 Tier 2
Pillar 1: Regulatory Capital
Credit risk Standardized IRB Approach F-IRB A-IRB PD LGD EAD Operational risk Basic Standardized AMA Market risk Duration Value at risk
Pillar 2: Supervisory Review
Economic capital Liquidity risk Legal risk
Pillar 3: Market Disclosure
Disclosure
Business and Economics Portal
v t e

Basel II is the second of the Basel Accords, (now extended and effectively superseded by Basel III), which are recommendations on banking laws and regulations issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Basel II, initially published in June 2004, was intended to create an international standard for banking regulators to control how much capital banks need to put aside to guard against the types of financial and operational risks banks (and the whole economy) face. One focus was to maintain sufficient consistency of regulations so that this does not become a source of competitive inequality amongst internationally active banks. Advocates of Basel II believed that such an international standard could help protect the international financial system from the types of problems that might arise should a major bank or a series of banks collapse. In theory, Basel II attempted to accomplish this by setting up risk and capital management requirements designed to ensure that a bank has adequate capital for the risk the bank exposes itself to through its lending and investment practices. Generally speaking, these rules mean that the greater risk to which the bank is exposed, the greater the amount of capital the bank needs to hold to safeguard its solvency and overall economic stability.

Politically, it was difficult to implement Basel II in the regulatory environment prior to 2008, and progress was generally slow until that year's major banking crisis caused mostly by credit default swaps, mortgage-backed security markets and similar derivatives. As Basel III was negotiated, this was top of mind, and accordingly much more stringent standards were contemplated, and quickly adopted in some key countries including the USA.

Contents 1 Objective 2 The accord in operation 2.1 The first pillar 2.2 The second pillar 2.3 The third pillar 3 Recent chronological updates 3.1 September 2005 update 3.2 November 2005 update 3.3 July 2006 update 3.4 November 2007 update 3.5 July 16, 2008 update 3.6 January 16, 2009 update 3.7 July 8–9, 2009 update 4 Basel II and the regulators 4.1 Implementation progress 5 Basel II and the global financial crisis 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Objective

The final version aims at:

1. Ensuring that capital allocation is more risk sensitive;
2. Enhance disclosure requirements which will allow market participants to assess the capital adequacy of an institution;
3. Ensuring that credit risk, operational risk and market risk are quantified based on data and formal techniques;
4. Attempting to align economic and regulatory capital more closely to reduce the scope for regulatory arbitrage.

While the final accord has largely addressed the regulatory arbitrage issue, there are still areas where regulatory capital requirements will diverge from the economic capital.

Basel II has largely left unchanged the question of how to actually define bank capital, which diverges from accounting equity in important respects. The Basel I definition, as modified up to the present, remains in place.

The accord in operation

Basel II uses a "three pillars" concept – (1) minimum capital requirements (addressing risk), (2) supervisory review and (3) market discipline.

The Basel I accord dealt with only parts of each of these pillars. For example: with respect to the first Basel II pillar, only one risk, credit risk, was dealt with in a simple manner while market risk was an afterthought; operational risk was not dealt with at all.

The first pillar

The first pillar deals with maintenance of regulatory capital calculated for three major components of risk that a bank faces: credit risk, operational risk, and market risk. Other risks are not considered fully quantifiable at this stage.

The credit risk component can be calculated in three different ways of varying degree of sophistication, namely standardized approach, Foundation IRB and Advanced IRB. IRB stands for "Internal Rating-Based Approach".

For operational risk, there are three different approaches - basic indicator approach or BIA, standardized approach or STA, and the internal measurement approach (an advanced form of which is the advanced measurement approach or AMA).

For market risk the preferred approach is VaR (value at risk).

As the Basel 2 recommendations are phased in by the banking industry it will move from standardised requirements to more refined and specific requirements that have been developed for each risk category by each individual bank. The upside for banks that do develop their own bespoke risk measurement systems is that they will be rewarded with potentially lower risk capital requirements. In future there will be closer links between the concepts of economic profit and regulatory capital.

Credit Risk can be calculated by using one of four approaches:

1. Standardised Approach

2. Foundation IRB

3. Advanced IRB Approach

4. General IB2 Restriction

The standardized approach sets out specific risk weights for certain types of credit risk. The standard risk weight categories used under Basel 1 were 0% for government bonds, 20% for exposures to OECD Banks, 50% for first line residential mortgages and 100% weighting on consumer loans and unsecured commercial loans. Basel II introduced a new 150% weighting for borrowers with lower credit ratings. The minimum capital required remained at 8% of risk weighted assets, with Tier 1 capital making up not less than half of this amount.

Banks that decide to adopt the standardised ratings approach must rely on the ratings generated by external agencies. Certain banks used the IRB approach as a result.

The second pillar

The second pillar deals with the regulatory response to the first pillar, giving regulators much improved 'tools' over those available to them under Basel I. It also provides a framework for dealing with all the other risks a bank may face, such as systemic risk, pension risk, concentration risk, strategic risk, reputational risk, liquidity risk and legal risk, which the accord combines under the title of residual risk. It gives banks a power to review their risk management system.

Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process (ICAAP) is the result of Pillar II of Basel II accords

The third pillar

This pillar aims to complement the minimum capital requirements and supervisory review process by developing a set of disclosure requirements which will allow the market participants to gauge the capital adequacy of an institution.

Market discipline supplements regulation as sharing of information facilitates assessment of the bank by others including investors, analysts, customers, other banks and rating agencies which leads to good corporate governance. The aim of pillar 3 is to allow market discipline to operate by requiring institutions to disclose details on the scope of application, capital, risk exposures, risk assessment processes and the capital adequacy of the institution. It must be consistent with how the senior management including the board assess and manage the risks of the institution.

When market participants have a sufficient understanding of a bank’s activities and the controls it has in place to manage its exposures, they are better able to distinguish between banking organisations so that they can reward those that manage their risks prudently and penalise those that do not.

These disclosures are required to be made at least twice a year, except qualitative disclosures providing a summary of the general risk management objectives and policies which can be made annually. Institutions are also required to create a formal policy on what will be disclosed, controls around them along with the validation and frequency of these disclosures. In general, the disclosures under Pillar 3 apply to the top consolidated level of the banking group to which the Basel II framework applies.