BIS – Page 11 – Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog

General guide to account opening updated

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has revised the General guide to account opening, first published in 2003.

The Basel Committee issues this guide as an annex to the guidelines on the Sound management of risks related to money laundering and financing of terrorism, which was first published in January 2014. These guidelines revised, updated and merged two previous publications of the Basel Committee, issued in 2001 and 2004.

Most bank-customer relationships start with an account-opening procedure. The customer information collected and verified at this stage is crucial to the bank in order for it to fulfil its AML/CFT obligations, both at the inception of the customer relationship and thereafter, but it is also useful in protecting it against potential abuses, such as fraud or identity theft. The policies and procedures for account opening that all banks need to establish must reflect AML/CFT obligations.

The revised version of the General guide to account opening and customer identification takes into account the significant enhancements to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations and related guidance. In particular, it builds on the FATF Recommendations, as well as on two supplementary FATF publications specifically relevant for this guide: Guidance for a risk-based approach: The banking sector and Transparency and beneficial ownership, both issued in October 2014.

As for the remainder of the guidelines, the content of the proposed guide is in no way intended to strengthen, weaken or otherwise modify the FATF standards. Rather, it aims to support banks in implementing the FATF standards and guidance, which requires the adoption of specific policies and procedures, in particular on account opening.

A consultative version was issued in July 2015. The Basel Committee wishes to thank all those who took the trouble to express their views during the consultation process.

Is The Rise of Electronic Trading in Fixed Income Markets Risky?

Electronic trading has become an increasingly important part of the fixed income market landscape in recent years. As a result there are a number of risks to consider and regulatory issues to address, according to a newly released report from the Bank For International Settlements Markets Committee.

The growth in electronic trading as, according to the report, contributed to changes in the market structure, the process of price discovery and the nature of liquidity provision. The rise of electronic trading has enabled a greater use of automated trading (including algorithmic and high-frequency trading) in fixed income futures and parts of cash bond markets.

The term “electronic trading” covers a variety of activities that are part of the life cycle of a trade. In this report, electronic trading refers to the transfer of ownership of a financial instrument whereby the matching of the two counterparties in the negotiation or execution phase of the trade occurs through an electronic system.

Electronic trading broadly covers: trades conducted in systems such as electronic quote requests, electronic communications networks or dealer platforms; alternative electronic platforms such as dark pools; the quotation of prices or the dissemination of trade requests electronically; and settlement and reporting mechanisms that are electronic. For example, this includes both high-frequency trading on exchanges and trades negotiated by voice but executed and settled electronically.

The electronification of all these aspects of fixed income trading has been steadily increasing. There are now a variety of electronic trading platforms (ETPs), systems that match buyers with sellers, that differ in terms of the composition of their clients and their trading protocols.

Innovative trading venues and protocols (reinforced by changes in the nature of intermediation) have proliferated, and new market participants have emerged. For some fixed income securities, “electronification” has reached a level similar to that in equity and foreign exchange markets, but for other instruments the take-up is lagging.

Electronic trading in fixed income markets has been growing steadily. In many jurisdictions, it has supplanted voice trading as the new standard for many fixed income asset classes. Electronification, ie the rising use of electronic trading technology, has been driven by a combination of factors. These include: (i) advances in technology; (ii) changes in regulation; and (iii) changes in the structure and liquidity characteristics of specific markets. For some fixed income securities, electronification has reached a level similar to that in equity and foreign exchange markets. US Treasury markets are a prime example of a highly electronic fixed income market, in which a high proportion of trading in benchmark securities is done using automated trading. However, fixed income markets still lag developments in other asset classes due to their greater heterogeneity and complexity.

The report highlights two specific areas of rapid evolution in fixed income markets. First, trading is becoming more automated in the most liquid and standardised parts of fixed income markets, often importing technology developed in other asset classes. Traditional dealers too are using technology to improve the efficiency of their market-making. And non-bank liquidity providers are searching for ways to trade directly with end investors using direct electronic connections. Second, electronic trading platforms are experimenting with new protocols to bring together buyers and sellers.

Advances in technology and regulatory changes have impacted the economics of intermediation in fixed income markets. Technology improvements have enabled dealers to substitute capital for labour. They are able to reduce costs by automating quoting and hedging of certain trades. Dealers are also able to better monitor the trading behaviour of their customers and how their order flow changes in response to news. Dealers are internalising flows more efficiently across trading desks, providing greater economies of scale for trading in securities where volumes are particularly high. But the growth in electronic trading is posing a number of challenges for traditional dealers. It has allowed new competitors with lower marginal costs to reduce margins and force efficiency gains, and it has required a large investment in information technology at a time when traditional dealers are cutting costs.

Electronification is also changing the behaviour of buy-side investors. They are deepening their use of execution strategies, in particular complex algorithms. Large asset managers are further internalising flows within their fund family. And a number of asset managers are supporting different competing platform initiatives that are attempting to source pools of liquidity using new trading protocols. Electronic trading tends to have a positive impact in terms of market quality, but there are exceptions. There is relatively little research specific to fixed income markets, but lessons can be drawn from other asset classes. Evidence predominantly suggests that electronic trading platforms bring advantages to investors by lowering transaction costs. They improve market quality for assets that were already liquid by increasing competition, broadening market access and reducing the dependence on traditional market-makers. But platforms are not the appropriate solution for all securities, particularly for illiquid securities for which the risks from information leakage are high. For these securities, there is still a role for bilateral dealer-client relationships.

The impact of automated and high-frequency trading is a matter of considerable debate. Studies suggest that automation results in faster price discovery and an overall drop in transaction costs (at least for small trade sizes). The entrance of principal trading firms with lower marginal costs than traditional market-makers has intensified competition. It remains to be seen whether the benefits of automation observed in normal trading periods also prevail during periods of stress, when the benefits of immediacy are particularly high. Competition over speed might displace traditional broker-dealers who may be more willing to bear risks over longer horizons. There is a risk that liquidity may have become less robust and prices more sensitive to order flow imbalances. Some recent episodes covered in this document shed some light on these issues. These episodes highlight that multiple drivers are likely to be at play, rather than conclusive evidence pointing to a predominant impact of automated trading alone. Electronic trading, and in particular automated trading, poses a number of challenges to policymakers. The appropriate response may differ across jurisdictions because of the heterogeneous nature of fixed income markets as well as the varying degrees of electronification.

The report identifies four core areas for further policy assessment:

First, the steady advance of electronic trading needs to be appropriately monitored. Access to better data is required. A supplement to better monitoring is to establish regular dialogue between regulatory bodies and industry participants.
Second, further investigation is required to gauge the impact of automated trading on market quality. While there has been an improvement in certain metrics, liquidity may have become more fragile during stress episodes. More sophisticated measures need to be used to capture the multiple dimensions of market quality.
Third, electronification has created additional challenges for risk management at market-makers, platform providers and end investors. Algorithm developers should follow guidelines for best practices. Policymakers should be conscious of the growing dependence on critical electronic trading infrastructures.
Fourth, regulation and best practice guidelines should be living documents. They should be repeatedly reviewed and adapted as markets evolve. It may also be worth considering whether current regulatory requirements contribute to a level playing field amid the changing market structure and/or whether, for example, a code of conduct applicable to all significant market participants may be appropriate, when warranted by the specific circumstances.

When responding to these challenges, regulators should strike a balance between prescription and room for healthy innovation in market design. A flexible approach can enable platforms to compete to discover new ways to increase efficiency and integrity.

Credit Booms Sap Productivity Growth Through Labour Reallocation

Credit booms can seriously damage an economy’s health. They may damage the economy even as they occur by reducing productivity growth, regardless of whether a crisis follows according to a recent BIS working paper – “Labour reallocation and productivity dynamics: financial causes, real consequences” which investigates the link between credit booms, productivity growth, labour reallocations and financial crises in a sample of over twenty advanced economies and over forty years.

They find first, credit booms tend to undermine productivity growth by inducing labour reallocations towards lower productivity growth sectors. A temporarily bloated construction sector stands out as an example. Second, the impact of reallocations that occur during a boom, and during economic expansions more generally, is much larger if a crisis follows. In other words, when economic conditions become more hostile, misallocations beget misallocations.

These findings have broader implications: they shed light on the recent secular stagnation debate; they provide an alternative interpretation of hysteresis effects; they highlight the need to incorporate credit developments in the measurement of potential output; and they provide a new perspective on the medium- to long-run impact of monetary policy as well as its ability to fight post-crisis recessions.

In this paper we investigate the empirical link between credit booms, financial crises and productivity growth more closely. We focus on labour reallocations across sectors, although within-sector effects may also be important. Specifically, we ask two questions. First, during credit booms, does labour shift to lower productivity growth sectors? And second, does a financial crisis amplify the effect of labour reallocations that took place during the previous economic expansion? The answer to both of these questions is a clear “yes”. At least, this is the conclusion based on a sample of 21 advanced economies over the period 1969 to the present.

Graph 1 summarises our key findings. To help fix ideas, it shows the impact on productivity of a synthetic credit boom-cum-financial crisis episode – specifically, the impact of an assumed 5-year credit boom that is followed by a financial crisis, and considering a 5-year post-crisis window.

Three points stand out. First, credit booms tend to undermine productivity growth as they occur. For a typical credit boom, a loss of just over a quarter of a percentage point per year is a kind of lower bound. Second, a large part of this, slightly less than two thirds, reflects the shift of labour to lower productivity growth sectors – this is the only statistically significant component. Think, for instance, of shifts into a temporarily bloated construction sector. The remainder is the impact on productivity that is common across sectors, such as the shared component of aggregate capital accumulation and of total factor productivity (TFP). Third, the subsequent impact of labour reallocations that occur during a boom is much larger if a crisis follows. The average loss per year in the five years after a crisis is more than twice that during a boom, around half a percentage point per year. Put differently, the reallocations cast a long shadow. Taking the 10-year episode as a whole, the cumulative impact amounts to a loss of some 4 percentage points. Regardless of the specific figure, the impact is clearly sizeable. The findings are robust to alternative definitions of credit booms, to the inclusion of control variables and to techniques to identify the direction of causality.

While our results are quite general, it is easy to identify obvious recent examples of these mechanisms at work. The credit booms in Spain and Ireland in the decade to 2007 coincided with the rapid growth of employment in construction and real estate services at the expense of the more productive manufacturing sector. Once the boom turned to bust and the financial crisis struck, the economies went through a painful rebalancing phase, as resources had to shift back under adverse conditions – not least a broken financial system that did not facilitate, indeed may well have hindered, the process. In this sense, the reallocations of resources during the boom were clearly misallocations.

Note: BIS Working Papers are written by members of the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements, and from time to time by other economists, and are published by the Bank. The papers are on subjects of topical interest and are technical in character. The views expressed in them are those of their authors and not necessarily the views of the BIS.

Central Counterparties and the Too Big to Fail Agenda

In a speech by Andrew Gracie, Executive Director of Resolution of the Bank of England, at the 21st Annual Risk USA Conference, he outlines some of the elements in the Too Big To Fail (TBTF) resolution agenda. The aim is to ensure that in the event that a global systemically important financial institution (G-SIFI) fails there is minimal interruption of the activities of a firm that are critical to the functioning of the broader financial system. And achieving that outcome without recourse to taxpayer bailouts, as public authorities were forced to during the crisis.

He says that progress in developing a new paradigm for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) has been impressive. Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Financial Institutions1 were agreed by G20 leaders around this time four years ago. Statutory regimes consistent with this standard are now in place in the US, EU and Japan – in fact in all but a handful of jurisdictions where G-SIBs are headquartered. Crisis Management Groups (CMGs) have been working on resolution plans for each of the G-SIBs. The authorities participating in the CMGs have committed at a senior level in a resolvability assessment process (RAP) to the resolution strategies emerging for each of the G-SIBs. These CMGs work towards identifying barriers to making resolution work and how these should be removed. Often these barriers are consistent across firms. Perhaps most notable is the requirement for loss absorbency – establishing a liability structure for G-SIBs that is consistent with bail-in, not bail-out. Again, there has been significant progress here. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) issued a consultation document2 on a minimum standard for Total Loss Absorbing Capacity (TLAC) last November and is committed to producing a final standard ahead of the G20 summit next month in Antalya. This will be a major step on the road to ending “Too Big to Fail.”

He goes on to discuss the same TBTF agenda for other types of G-SIFIs, in particular central counterparties (CCPs). CCPs form a key part of the global financial landscape. They have become ever more important since the crisis. This will continue as mandatory central clearing is introduced around the world. These entities are an essential part of the international financial system, and need appropriate regulation and viable resolution paths in an event of failure, without causing a cascading crash. This aspect of the international financial markets and their control bears close watching.

Addressing the systemic risks associated with over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives markets is one of the reasons why G20 leaders introduced mandatory central clearing. People tell us that we have thus created in CCPs concentration risk and critical nodes. This is true in part, but we did this on the basis that in CCPs risks could be better recognised and identified, better managed and reduced via better netting. Nonetheless, as many before me have commented the largest CCPs are becoming increasingly systemic and interconnected such that their critical services could not stop suddenly without risk of wider contagion. Thus, not only do we have to ensure that the level of supervisory intensity matches the risks, something my supervisory colleagues are very focused on, we must also address the issue of what should happen if a CCP were to fail.

This is already widely recognised. So too is the need for an international solution to the questions that CCP recovery and resolution presents. The largest CCPs are systemically relevant at a global level, important for financial stability in multiple jurisdictions due to the nature of their business and the composition of their members and users. They serve multiple markets, having dozens of clearing members from different countries and clearing products in multiple currencies. A patch-work of approaches to recovery and resolution would risk regulatory arbitrage and competitive distortion and so, whilst the fiscal backstop against the unsuccessful resolution of a CCP is ultimately a national one, it is best that the answer on how to avoid this backstop ever being used is developed at a global level.

Fortunately, that work is already underway and CCP recovery and resolution forms an important part of the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) continuing agenda to end Too Big To Fail (TBTF). In October 2014 an Annex was added to the Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes to cover their application to Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs). More recently, the FSB published its 2015 CCP workplan. As part of this, a group on financial market infrastructure (fmi CBCM), equivalent to the Cross-Border Crisis Management Group (CBCM) that I chair for banks, has been established within the FSB to take forward international work on CCP resolution. Authorities in a number of jurisdictions are responding to the need for effective resolution arrangements for CCPs, with legislative proposals expected in the EU, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and elsewhere to add to existing regimes, including in the US under Title II of Dodd Frank. In the UK, the Bank of England has formal responsibility for the resolution of UK-incorporated CCPs. To aid us in drawing up resolution plans for UK CCPs, we have established the first Crisis Management Group for a CCP. We hope and expect it to be the first of many.

But work on CCP resolution needs to be seen in the broader context of financial reform:

The Committee on Payment and Market Infrastructures, along with the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (CPMI-IOSCO) is continuing its work on CCP resilience and recovery. Work is in train on stress testing, on loss allocation and on disclosure requirements, as well as on ensuring consistent application of the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMIs) which set regulatory expectations for CCPs at a global level. All of this is important not only in its own right, but also to provide the market – the users of CCPs – with the tools and incentives to monitor resilience and drive effective risk management in CCPs themselves. To encourage competition between CCPs on resilience, not cost.

At the same time, the first line of defence for a CCP lies in the resilience of its members. Ongoing work to raise the prudential standards for banks on capital and liquidity, among other areas, should greatly reduce the risk of CCPs having to deal with a failing clearing member. And the progress I mentioned before on G-SIB resolution should help to ensure that, where a firm does fail, its payment and delivery obligations to the CCP continue to be met. I should add as an aside that there is more still to be done internationally in terms of removing technical and other obstacles to maintaining continuity of access to CCPs and other FMIs in the context of bank resolution. That continuity is not just essential to the bank in resolution but may also be critical for clients. If there is doubt about continued access to clearing services from a bank in resolution, clients may look to migrate rapidly to another provider. These issues around continuity and portability will be the subject of work within the FSB over the course of the coming year.

Together, these initiatives to improve the resilience and recovery arrangements for CCPs and their members will help to reduce the probability of CCP default. But while improvements to resilience are necessary they may not by themselves be sufficient. No institution is “fail safe”. Ultimately, we need to have a credible resolution approach for CCPs.

If we do, resolution should offer a continuing benefit in helping to incentivise recovery by removing expectations that the taxpayer will be compelled to step in. By contrast, if we do not have a credible regime in resolution, we run the risk of weakening the incentives both to manage a CCP prudently, as well as incentives for clearing members to contribute to a CCP’s recovery should it get into trouble. The benefits of resolution to market discipline and recovery are common to all financial institutions. But that is not the only insight from banks that is relevant to CCPs.

Before going too far in talking up the similarities, I should note – although it should go without saying – that CCPs are very different from their bank clearing members in many important respects, including their business models, legal structures and balance sheets. CCP recovery and resolution therefore poses some specific issues, some of which I will touch on today. However, at base there are principles that are common to the resolution of any systemically important institution.

Perhaps the most obvious similarity between the resolution of banks and CCPs is in the common objective: resolution should deliver continuity of critical economic functions without reliance on solvency support from taxpayers to achieve it. For that continuity to be achieved it is not enough that the financial losses of the institution are fully absorbed; the going-concern resources of the institution, or of any successor institution, must be restored to a sufficient level to command market confidence prior to any post-resolution restructuring or wind-down.

In the case of banks, this means that when a bank suffers losses eroding its going concern capital to the point where triggers for resolution are met, (i) it enters into resolution; (ii) its creditors are bailed in to recapitalise the firm; and (iii) this bail-in replicates what would have happened in a court-based commercial restructuring or insolvency. In other words, losses are allocated according to the creditor hierarchy but without the value destruction created by the hard stop of insolvency. This ensures that the resolution provides continuity and meets the safeguard that creditors are not worse off than in insolvency. While these are the essential elements of a resolution, they are likely to play out differently in the context of a CCP.

Intervention by a resolution authority, especially at a point where default management procedures have yet to be exhausted is action that cannot be taken lightly. Nor can the discretion of a resolution authority to deviate from the existing rules of the CCP be unbounded. Appropriate creditor safeguards are central to ensuring that an effective resolution regime does not unduly interfere with property rights or undermine its own value by introducing unnecessary uncertainty into a financial institution’s contractual relationships both in resolution and outside of it.

Perhaps the most fundamental safeguard to creditors in resolution is that the actions of the resolution authority will not leave them worse off than if the authority had not intervened and the firm had instead entered a liquidation proceeding. For the purposes of determining this No Creditor Worse Off protection, bank resolution takes an insolvency counterfactual; recognition that a failing bank that meets the conditions for resolution would in most likelihood lose its licence at that point if not resolved, thereby tipping it into insolvency (whether cash-flow, balance-sheet or both) if it was not there already. That insolvency counterfactual requires an ex post assessment of the value of assets and liabilities of the firm. That is no easy task but one that can, and has been, credibly undertaken.

For CCPs the task of assessing an insolvency counterfactual is likely to be harder still – particularly if it must rely upon a forecast of how the rest of the waterfall would have unfolded, the behaviour of the CCP’s participants and the movements of the markets in the days that would have followed if resolution had not taken place. A liquidation counterfactual must also confront the argument that the CCP would have protected itself from insolvency through full tear-up.

Given these valuation challenges, I suspect there will need to be careful further consideration given to the formulation and practical application of the NCWO safeguard; we must end up with a safeguard that is sufficiently certain and capable of estimation in advance that both creditors and resolution authorities are able to make sensible decisions before, during and after resolution.

With that, let me conclude by summing up some key points:

CCP resolution is both a necessary and inevitable part of the overall post-crisis reform agenda to end Too Big to Fail. As private, profit-making enterprises CCPs must be allowed to fail, but, given their systemic importance, many will need to be allowed to do so in a manner that maintains the continuity of their critical functions.

Having a credible resolution regime for Clearing Members is a big step forward in helping to reduce the risk of clearing member default and from that the risk of CCP failure.

But reliance on successful resolution of members does not negate the need for CCP resolution arrangements to be capable of responding to both default and non-default losses emerging from both systemic and idiosyncratic shocks.

In thinking about the underlying objectives and needs of a CCP resolution regime, there are many similarities to bank resolution and these should not be forgotten, but clearly there are many differences too and we need to recognise that.

Effective resolution requires the ability to act promptly and before the point at which the chance of stabilising the CCP is lost. The resolution authority must have a variety of tools at its disposal to enable it to respond to the reason the CCP failed. It should be able to intervene in a timely and forward-looking way before the end of the waterfall – but incentives must be aligned and we want this to be set up in a way that promotes CCP resilience and makes recovery work.

In order to continue a CCP’s critical services in resolution, there must be an ability both to cover the losses credibly in a failure scenario and to recapitalise the CCP’s going concern resources – i.e. its capital, margin and default fund. How we achieve this is something for FSB to address so that the shared interest in maintaining stability in the global financial system can be realised.

Financial Firm Regulation and External Audit

The Financial Stability Institute has issued an occasional paper entitled “the “four lines of defence model” for financial institutions.” It takes the so called three-lines-of-defence model further to reflect specific governance features of regulated financial institutions. The paper highlights issues which exist in the current “recommended” approach, and specifically limitations of internal audit. Embedding the external auditors’ role in the structure of the defence system could mitigate the shortcomings of the traditional three-lines-of-defence model and increase the soundness and reliability of the risk management framework.

Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–09, the design and implementation of internal control systems has attracted serious academic and professional attention. Much research on the effectiveness and characteristics of internal audit functions has been conducted under the sponsorship of the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation (IIARF) and published in academic and professional journals. The guidelines issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) in 2015 on corporate governance principles for banks emphasise the importance of proper risk management procedures, including, in particular, “an effective independent risk management function, under the direction of a chief risk officer (CRO), with sufficient stature, independence, resources and access to the board.” Furthermore, “the sophistication of the bank’s risk management and internal control infrastructure should keep pace with changes to the bank’s risk profile, to the external risk landscape and in industry practice” so as to identify, monitor and control risks on an ongoing bank-wide and individual-entity basis.

Despite these efforts, there has been little systematic analysis of how the design of an internal control system affects the efficiency and effectiveness of corporate governance processes, especially at financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies. The “three lines of defence model” has been used traditionally to model the interaction between corporate governance and internal control systems.

Recent significant risk incidents and corporate scandals caused by misconduct in financial market operations indicate that banks need to further enhance corporate governance measures. But, most importantly, such incidents have led to a further prioritisation of governmental and supervisory agendas relating to the potential systemic implications of weak internal control systems. This calls for a greater prominence of microprudential policies relating to misconduct at banks. It also calls for closer cooperation between regulators, and external and internal auditors, so as to win back public trust in financial institutions.

Specifically, four areas of weakness exist:

Misaligned incentives for risk-takers in first line of defence
Lack of organisational independence of functions in second line of defence
Lack of skills and expertise in second line functions
Inadequate and subjective risk assessment performed by internal audit

In order to account for the specific governance features of banks and insurance companies, they outline a “four lines of defence” model that endows supervisors and external auditors, who are formally outside the organisation, with a specific role in the organisational structure of the internal control system.Building upon the concept of a “triangular” relationship between internal auditors, supervisors and external auditors, they examine closely the interactions between them. By establishing a fourlines-of-defence model, they believe that new responsibilities and relationships between internal auditors, supervisors and external auditors will enhance control systems. That said however, they also highlight the risk that new problems could be caused by inadequate information flows among those actors.

Regulatory capital ratios, as well as other indicators of financial strength, such as liquidity and leverage ratios, are produced alongside banks’ standard financial reports but are not audited in the same way. This may create an expectations gap for society: what may be a bank’s most looked-at indicator is not audited. External auditors could perform assurance tasks related to such regulatory requirements (including capital ratios and risk-weighted assets, and leverage and liquidity ratios). Requirements for the independent scrutiny of regulatory capital information have evolved piecemeal across the world; some countries mandate publically available assurance reports, some only require financial institutions to inform regulators while others have no reporting requirement whatsoever. Given the size and importance of the banking sector – and the systemic risk posed to global financial markets – credibility and reliability are crucial.

They explored developments in a number of countries to illustrate the importance of increased cooperation between bank supervisors and external auditors:

1. United Kingdom:
The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) of the United Kingdom recently issued a consultative document59 laying out the rules for external auditors of the largest UK banks for the provision of written reports to the PRA as part of the statutory audit cycle. The PRA asked external auditors to contribute to its supervision of firms by directly engaging in a pro-active and constructive way to support judgment-based supervision and help promote the safety and soundness of firms supervised by the PRA. The insights gained by auditors when they carry out high-quality audits should help enhance the effectiveness of the relationship between the auditors and the supervisor.

There have been improvements in the last few years such as a closer and more frequent engagement between supervisors and external auditors. The PRA keeps monitoring the quality of auditor-supervisor dialogue. In a survey of external auditors, it was noted that the vast majority of engagements was considered only ‘reasonable’ and that the PRA’s aim was to improve this engagement in the longer term. In particular, in individual cases both supervisors and auditors considered that there was room for improvement in the frankness with which information was shared, how often it was shared and what was covered in bilateral meetings.

2. Switzerland:
For many years, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has adopted a dualist approach whereby on-site examinations are outsourced to approved and licensed external auditors. A recent IMF assessment 60 noted significant weaknesses in Swiss supervision. FINMA should provide more guidance to auditors to ensure greater supervisory harmonisation across entities and should complement the auditors’ work with its own in-depth examinations of selected issues. In addition, the payment of auditors by a supervised entity was viewed critically as auditors should not be paid by a supervised entity but rather by a “FINMA administered bank-financed fund”. The IMF also noted that FINMA’s on- and off-site supervisory resources had been increased in recent years but still needed to be strengthened. Resources were insufficient to supervise and regulate the entire banking system in a way that met the Core Principles for Banking Supervision, including sufficient in-depth on-site work and oversight of supervisory work done by external auditors, particularly for small- and medium-sized banks.

3. United States:
A recent IMF report examined the relationship between supervisors and external auditors, and noted “that supervisors meet periodically with external audit firms to discuss issues of common interest relating to bank operations”. It also noted that there was no “safe haven” protection for external auditors in reporting issues to regulators. However, according to Part 363 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) rules, a bank must inform its supervisor within 15 days of having received written information from the auditors about a violation that was committed. This gap is somehow mitigated by the frequent contact between supervisors and auditors in the course of examinations and planning. Furthermore, although the supervisors cannot set the scope of the external audit, they could encourage the auditors to include new issues. However, the report highlighted weaknesses relating to the fact that supervisors do not have legal powers to add specific issues to the scope of the external audit in order to address issues that are not normally covered by such an audit.

4. Hong Kong:
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) devotes significant efforts to ensuring effective communication channels with external auditors. Furthermore, its powers to commission external auditor reports for supervisory purposes further supports the relationship between the HKMA and the external auditors, and the understanding of the HKMA’s supervisory concerns. However, a recent IMF report63 states that there are two areas in which the HKMA lacks powers and where the legislative framework could be enhanced: the HKMA lacks powers to reject the appointment of an external auditor, when there are concerns over its competence or independence, and it does not have direct power to access the working documents of the external auditor even though the HKMA is able to address issues that arise by indirect means. While the HKMA has been able to work around these restrictions, amendments to the relevant legislation should be made.

Building Stronger Macroprudential Frameworks

Durable financial stability requires more than microprudential standards that bolster the resilience of individual firms. It also requires a macroprudential perspective, with flexibility to respond to shocks wherever they occur; with higher standards for systemically important firms; and to increase levels of resilience when risks increase.

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, Chairman of the Financial Stability Board and Vice-Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board, (ESRB) has addressed European Parliament’s ECON Committee.

The ESRB is the only hub where all the relevant authorities are present, including central banks, bank supervisors, and securities authorities. Through our regular dialogue we can establish and update best practice.

Consider residential real estate. This year ESRB’s work emphasised how these markets were influenced by structural differences, from Loan-to-Value restrictions to tax treatments, across the EU.

Its analysis identified the tools authorities may use to respond to different vulnerabilities, ranging from capital measures to restrictions on debt-to-income ratios and collateral.

Key lessons of the analysis include that:

1. flexibility is needed in both design and calibration of macroprudential tools;

2. no single tool can combat all property risks;

3. tools need to be appropriate to domestic circumstances; and

4. domestic policies are more effective for both domestic and EU financial stability if their spillovers are managed.

The ESRB has built a framework to assess and manage such spillovers, which should be agreed soon and be operationalised early next year. Its central feature is reciprocity – eliminating regulatory arbitrage to give domestic policy greater traction. It will be member led, but, importantly, backed by ESRB recommendations. Compliance will be on an “act or explain” basis but the presumption will be that many exposure-based measures (e.g. LTV, LTI and maturity) will be reciprocated.

This is significant. The ESRB has been notified of macroprudential actions 69 times this year, and 173 times since the introduction of the CRR/CRD in 2014. Although many notices are procedural, they show the direction of travel. More countries are using macroprudential tools, creating an increasing need for a “clearing house” that is both comprehensive and timely.

The ESRB will also evaluate the ways national macroprudential authorities might apply countercyclical capital buffers against financial exposures from countries outside the EEA – a tool given to the ESRB under Union law. That will further bolster collective resilience against the global financial cycle and spillovers from outside the Union.

While risks in property markets reflect national differences, other risks such as misconduct have more common determinants.

In the past five years, misconduct penalties imposed on EU banks have totalled €50bn.

Those costs have direct implications for the real economy. At 5% leverage, that capital could have supported €1 trillion of lending capacity.

More fundamentally, repeated episodes of misconduct undercut public trust in the system.

The ESRB’s work has helped catalyse sensible actions to begin the process to rebuild that trust.

First, it has proposed capturing misconduct costs in stress tests to ensure banks remain resilient even under severe outcomes.

The Bank of England has followed this approach in its most recent stress test which included and additional £40bn of misconduct costs. These costs were calibrated to have a low likelihood of being exceeded and are therefore, by design, much larger than the amounts already provided for by banks.

Second, the ESRB has also proposed tackling misconduct at source by increasing individual accountability. This can be done by reforming remuneration – using variable pay, combined with Malus and Clawback, to hard-wire stronger incentives for good behaviour within firms. The UK is committed to this approach with the toughest remuneration regime in the EU, including the longest deferrals and claw backs.

However, the effectiveness of such measures across the EU is being tempered by the bonus cap. For example, in 2013, the ratio between fixed and variable for material risk takers at major UK banks was around 1:3 – meaning three quarters of remuneration was at risk from individual misconduct. The next year, when firms first had to apply the bonus cap, that ratio had fallen to around 1:1, with the overall level of remuneration unaffected.

Prompted by the ESRB, the FSB is now examining the impact of various compensation tools on misconduct, and if appropriate, it will recommend improvements to next year’s G20 summit.

Reforms to compensation are necessary but not sufficient. ESRB reports have rightly stressed that more should be done to hold senior individuals to account.

Prompted in part by the ESRB, the FSB members will share experiences on the role of bank regulatory powers to address misconduct and on approaches to enhancing individual accountability.

In the UK, we are implementing a new regime to ensure senior managers right across the financial system are held directly accountable for failures in their areas of responsibility. That will be buttressed by clear code of conduct, designed by practitioners, to ensure high standards are understood by all.

BIS Updates Guidance On Credit Loss Risk and Accounting

The Bank for International Settlements has released a document which sets out supervisory guidance on sound credit risk practices associated with the implementation and ongoing application of expected credit loss (ECL) accounting frameworks. The move to ECL accounting frameworks by accounting standard setters is an important step forward in resolving the weakness identified during the recent financial crisis that credit loss recognition was too little, too late. It is also consistent with the April 2009 call by G20 Leaders for accounting standard setters to “strengthen accounting recognition of loan loss provisions by incorporating a broader range of credit information”.

This guidance, which should be viewed as complementary to the accounting standards, presents the Committee’s view of the appropriate application of ECL accounting standards. It provides banks with supervisory guidance on how the ECL accounting model should interact with a bank’s overall credit risk practices and regulatory framework, but does not set out regulatory capital requirements on expected loss provisioning under the Basel capital framework.

The failure to identify and recognise increases in credit risk in a timely manner can aggravate underlying weaknesses in credit quality, adversely affect bank capital adequacy, and hinder appropriate risk assessment and control of a bank’s credit risk exposure. The bank risk management function’s involvement in the assessment and measurement of accounting ECL is essential to ensuring adequate allowances in accordance with the applicable accounting framework.

Supervisory guidance for credit risk and accounting for expected credit losses

A bank’s board of directors (or equivalent) and senior management are responsible for ensuring that the bank has appropriate credit risk practices, including an effective system of internal control, to consistently determine adequate allowances in accordance with the bank’s stated policies and procedures, the applicable accounting framework and relevant supervisory guidance.
A bank should adopt, document and adhere to sound methodologies that address policies, procedures and controls for assessing and measuring credit risk on all lending exposures. The measurement of allowances should build upon those robust methodologies and result in the appropriate and timely recognition of expected credit losses in accordance with the applicable accounting framework.
A bank should have a credit risk rating process in place to appropriately group lending exposures on the basis of shared credit risk characteristics.
A bank’s aggregate amount of allowances, regardless of whether allowance components are determined on a collective or an individual basis, should be adequate and consistent with the objectives of the applicable accounting framework.
A bank should have policies and procedures in place to appropriately validate models used to assess and measure expected credit losses.
A bank’s use of experienced credit judgment, especially in the robust consideration of reasonable and supportable forward-looking information, including macroeconomic factors, is essential to the assessment and measurement of expected credit losses.
A bank should have a sound credit risk assessment and measurement process that provides it with a strong basis for common systems, tools and data to assess credit risk and to account for expected credit losses.
A bank’s public disclosures should promote transparency and comparability by providing timely, relevant and decision-useful information.

Supervisory evaluation of credit risk practices, accounting for expected credit losses and capital adequacy

Banking supervisors should periodically evaluate the effectiveness of a bank’s credit risk practices.
Banking supervisors should be satisfied that the methods employed by a bank to determine accounting allowances lead to an appropriate measurement of expected credit losses in accordance with the applicable accounting framework.
Banking supervisors should consider a bank’s credit risk practices when assessing a bank’s capital adequacy

In June 2006, the Basel Committee issued supervisory guidance on Sound credit risk assessment and valuation for loans to address how common data and processes may be used for credit risk assessment, accounting and capital adequacy purposes and to highlight provisioning concepts that are consistent in prudential and accounting frameworks. This document replaces the Committee’s previous guidance.

BIS Capital Proposals Revised Again, LVR’s and Investment Loans Significantly Impacted

The second consultative document on Revisions to the Standardised Approach for credit risk has been released for discussion.

There are a number of significant changes to residential property risk calculations . These guidelines will eventually become part of “Basel III/IV”, and will apply to banks not using their internal assessments (which are also being reviewed separately).

First, risk will be assessed by loan to value ratios, with higher LVR’s having higher risk weights. Second, investment property will have a separate a higher set of LVR related risk-weights. Third, debt servicing ratios will not directly be used for risk weights, but will still figure in the underwriting assessments.

There are also tweaks to loans to SME’s.

These proposals differ in several ways from an initial set of proposals published by the Committee in December 2014. That earlier proposal set out an approach that removed all references to external credit ratings and assigned risk weights based on a limited number of alternative risk drivers. Respondents to the first consultative document expressed concerns, suggesting that the complete removal of references to ratings was unnecessary and undesirable. The Committee has decided to reintroduce the use of ratings, in a non-mechanistic manner, for exposures to banks and corporates. The revised proposal also includes alternative approaches for jurisdictions that do not allow the use of external ratings for regulatory purposes.

The proposed risk weighting of real estate loans has also been modified, with the loan-to-value ratio as the main risk driver. The Committee has decided not to use a debt service coverage ratio as a risk driver given the challenges of defining and calibrating a global measure that can be consistently applied across jurisdictions. The Committee instead proposes requiring the assessment of a borrower’s ability to pay as a key underwriting criterion. It also proposes to categorise all exposures related to real estate, including specialised lending exposures, under the same asset class, and apply higher risk weights to real estate exposures where repayment is materially dependent on the cash flows generated by the property securing the exposure.

This consultative document also includes proposals for exposures to multilateral development banks, retail and defaulted exposures, and off-balance sheet items.The credit risk standardised approach treatment for sovereigns, central banks and public sector entities are not within the scope of these proposals. The Committee is considering these exposures as part of a broader and holistic review of sovereign-related risks.

Comments on the proposals should be made by Friday 11 March 2016.

Looking in more detail at the property-related proposals, the following risk weights will be applied to loans against real property:

which are finished properties
covered by a legal mortgage
with a valid claim over the property in case of default
where the borrower has proven ability to repay – including defined DSR’s
with a prudent valuation (and in a falling market, a revised valuation), to derive a valid LVR
all documentation held

If all criteria a met the following risk weights are proposed.

For residential real estate exposures to individuals with an LTV ratio higher than 100% the risk weight applied will be 75%. For residential real estate exposures to SMEs with an LTV ratio higher than 100% the risk weight applied will be 85%. If criteria are not met, then 150% will apply.

Turning to investment property, where cash flow from the property is the primary source of income to service the loan

Commercial property will have different ratios, based on counter party risk weight.

But again, those properties serviced by cash flow have higher weightings.

Development projects will be rated at 150%.

Bearing in mind that residential property today has a standard weight of 35%, it is clear that more capital will be required for high LVR and investment loans. As a result, if these proposals were to be adopted, then borrowers can expect to pay more for investment loans, and higher LVR loans.

It will also increase the burden of compliance on banks, and this will likely increase underwriting costs. Finally, whilst ongoing data on DSR will not be required, there is still a need to market-to-market in a falling market to ensure the LVR’s are up to date. This means, that if property valuations fall significantly, higher risk weights will start to apply, the further they fall, the larger the risk weights.

Finally, it continues the divergence between the relative risks of investment and owner occupied loans, the former demanding more capital, thus increasing the differential pricing of investment loans.

The Committee notes that the SA is a global minimum standard and that it is not possible to take into account all national characteristics in a simple approach. As such, national supervisors should require a more conservative treatment if they consider it necessary to reflect jurisdictional specificities. Furthermore, the SA is a methodology for calculating minimum risk-based capital requirements and should in no way be seen as a substitute for prudent risk management by banks.

Now, some will argue that in Australia, this will not impact the market much, as the major banks use their own internal models, however, as these are under review (with the intent of closing the gap somewhat with the standard methods used by the smaller players) expect the standard models to inform potential changes in the IRB set. Also, it is not clear yet whether banks who use lenders mortgage insurance for loans above 80% will be protected from the higher capital bands, though we suspect they may not. Non-bank lenders may well benefit as they are not caught by the rules, although capital market pricing may well change, and impact them at a second order level. We will be interested to see how local regulators handle the situation where an investment loan is partly serviced by income from rentals, and partly from direct income, which rules should apply – how will “materially dependent” be interpreted?

The Disruptive Power of Digital Currencies

The BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures just published a report on Digital currencies. New digital platforms have the potential to disrupt traditional payment mechanisms. Much of the innovation is emerging from non-bank sectors and in a devolved, decentralised, peer-to-peer mode, without connection to sovereign currencies or authority. So how should central banks respond?

One option is to consider using the technology itself to issue digital currencies. In a sense, central banks already issue “digital currency” in that reserve balances now only exist in electronic form and are liabilities of the central bank. The question is whether such digital liabilities should be issued using new technology and be made more widely available than at present. This raises a wide range of questions, including the impact on the payments system, the privacy of transactions, the impact on private sector innovation, the impact on deposits held at commercial banks, the impact on financial stability of making a risk-free digital asset more widely available, the impact on the transmission of monetary policy, the technology which would be deployed in such a system and the extent to which it could be decentralised, and what type of entities would exist in such a system and how they should be regulated. Within the central bank community, the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England have begun research into a number of these topics.

Overall, the report considers the possible implications of interest to central banks arising from these innovations. First, many of the risks that are relevant for e-money and other electronic payment instruments are also relevant for digital currencies as assets being used as a means of payment. Second, the development of distributed ledger technology is an innovation with potentially broad applications. Wider use of distributed ledgers by new entrants or incumbents could have implications extending beyond payments, including their possible adoption by some financial market infrastructures (FMIs), and more broadly by other networks in the financial system and the economy as a whole. Because of these considerations, it is recommended that central banks continue monitoring and analysing the implications of these developments, both in digital currencies and distributed ledger technology. DFA questions whether this “watch and monitor” response is a sufficient strategy.

Central banks typically take an interest in retail payments as part of their role in maintaining the stability and efficiency of the financial system and preserving confidence in their currencies. Innovations in retail payments can have important implications for safety and efficiency; accordingly, many central banks monitor these developments. The emergence of what are frequently referred to as “digital currencies” was noted in recent reports by the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) on innovations and non-banks in retail payments. A subgroup was formed within the CPMI Working Group on Retail Payments to undertake an analysis of such “currencies” and to prepare a report for the Committee.

The subgroup has identified three key aspects relating to the development of digital currencies. The first is the assets (such as bitcoins) featured in many digital currency schemes. These assets typically have some monetary characteristics (such as being used as a means of payment), but are not typically issued in or connected to a sovereign currency, are not a liability of any entity and are not backed by any authority. Furthermore, they have zero intrinsic value and, as a result, they derive value only from the belief that they might be exchanged for other goods or services, or a certain amount of sovereign currency, at a later point in time. The second key aspect is the way in which these digital currencies are transferred, typically via a built-in distributed ledger. This aspect can be viewed as the genuinely innovative element within digital currency schemes. The third aspect is the variety of third-party institutions, almost exclusively non-banks, which have been active in developing and operating digital currency and distributed ledger mechanisms. These three aspects characterise the types of digital currencies discussed in this report.

A range of factors are potentially relevant for the development and use of digital currencies and distributed ledgers. Similar to retail payment systems or payment instruments, network effects are important for digital currencies, and there are a range of features and issues that are likely to influence the extent to which these network effects may be realised. It has also been considered whether there may be gaps in traditional payment services that are or might be addressed by digital currency schemes. One potential source of advantage, for example, is that a digital currency has a global reach by design. Moreover, distributed ledgers may offer lower costs to end users compared with existing centralised arrangements for at least some types of transactions. Also relevant to the emergence of digital currency schemes are issues of security and trust, as regards the asset, the distributed ledger, and the entities offering intermediation services related to digital currencies.

Digital currencies and distributed ledgers are an innovation that could have a range of impacts on many areas, especially on payment systems and services. These impacts could include the disruption of existing business models and systems, as well as the emergence of new financial, economic and social interactions and linkages. Even if the current digital currency schemes do not persist, it is likely that other schemes based on the same underlying procedures and distributed ledger technology will continue to emerge and develop.

The asset aspect of digital currencies has some similarities with previous analysis carried out in other contexts (eg there is analytical work from the late 1990s on the development of e-money that could compete with central bank and commercial bank money). However, unlike traditional e-money, digital currencies are not a liability of an individual or institution, nor are they backed by an authority. Furthermore, they have zero intrinsic value and, as a result, they derive value only from the belief that they might be exchanged for other goods or services, or a certain amount of sovereign currency, at a later point in time. Accordingly, holders of digital currency may face substantially greater costs and losses associated with price and liquidity risk than holders of sovereign currency.

The genuinely innovative element seems to be the distributed ledger, especially in combination with digital currencies that are not tied to money denominated in any sovereign currency. The main innovation lies in the possibility of making peer-to-peer payments in a decentralised network in the absence of trust between the parties or in any other third party. Digital currencies and distributed ledgers are closely tied together in most schemes today, but this close integration is not strictly necessary, at least from a theoretical point of view.

This report describes a range of issues that affect digital currencies based on distributed ledgers. Some of these issues may work to limit the growth of these schemes, which could remain a niche product even in the long term. However, the arrangements also offer some interesting features from both demand side and supply side perspectives. These features may drive the development of the schemes and even lead to widespread acceptance if risks and other barriers are adequately addressed.

The emergence of distributed ledger technology could present a hypothetical challenge to central banks, not through replacing a central bank with some other kind of central body but mainly because it reduces the functions of a central body and, in an extreme case, may obviate the need for a central body entirely for certain functions. For example, settlement might no longer require a central ledger held by a central body if banks (or other entities) could agree on changes to a common ledger in a way that does not require a central record-keeper and allows each bank to hold a copy of the (distributed) common ledger. Similarly, in some extreme scenarios, the role of a central body that issues a sovereign currency could be diminished by protocols for issuing non-sovereign currencies that are not the liability of any central institution.

There are different ways in which these systems might develop: either in isolation, as an alternative to existing payment systems and schemes, or in combination with existing systems or providers. These approaches would have different implications, but both could have significant effects on retail payment services and potentially on FMIs. There could also be potential effects on monetary policy or financial stability. However, for any of these implications to materialise, a substantial increase in the use of digital currencies and/or distributed ledgers would need to take place. Central banks could consider – as a potential policy response to these developments – investigating the potential uses of distributed ledgers in payment systems or other types of FMIs.

Proposed Basel Market Risk Framework Will Demand More Capital

Trading banks will find their capital requirements rising by more than 2%, according to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision who has today published the results of its interim impact analysis of its fundamental review of the trading book. The report assesses the impact of proposed revisions to the market risk framework set out in two consultative documents published in October 2013 and December 2014. Further revisions to the market risk rules have since been made, and the Committee expects to finalise the standard around year-end.

The analysis was based on a sample of 44 banks (including 2 from Australia) that provided usable data for the study and assumed that the proposed market risk framework was fully in force as of 31 December 2014. It shows that the change in market risk capital charges would produce a 4.7% increase in the overall Basel III minimum capital requirement. When the bank with the largest value of market risk-weighted assets is excluded from the sample, the change in total market risk capital charges leads to a 2.3% increase in overall Basel III minimum regulatory capital.

Compared with the current market risk framework, the proposed standard would result in a weighted average increase of 74% in aggregate market risk capital. When measured as a simple average, the increase in the total market risk capital requirement is 41%. For the median bank in the same sample, the capital increase is 18%.

Compared with the current internally modelled approaches for market risk, the capital requirement under the proposed internally modelled approaches would result in an increase of 54%. For the median bank, the capital requirement under the proposed internally modelled approaches is 13% higher.

Compared with the current standardised approach for market risk, the capital requirement under the proposed standardised approach is 128% higher. For the median bank, the capital requirement under the proposed standardised approach is 51% higher.