RBNZ launches The Dashboard: an innovation in prudential bank disclosures
In a dash for more transparency, the Reserve Bank launched the Bank Financial Strength Dashboard. This is a truly innovative on-line tool for sharing prudential and financial information on New Zealand banks. The Dashboard contains more than 100 individual metrics…
How questionable is the comparability of Basel risk weights in the EU banking sector?
In a couple of weeks’ time, at the FEBS conference in Rome, Stefan Kerbl and Zsofia Döme from the Austrian national bank (OENB), will present a paper on the comparability of Basel risk weights in…
FYI some links to follow progress on EU banking regulation
On 7 March, the Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper) of the European Council discussed the Presidency compromise texts of CRR 2, CRD 5, BRRD 2 and SRMR 2. If you are interested in the associated documents:…
The European Commission’s proposal to accelerate the reduction of non-performing loans
This week the EC presented concrete steps to tackle non-performing loans, see this page. Ouch One and Ouch Two Two reasons why this is an interesting proposal. First, it forces banks to deduct any provisioning…
No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy
In March 2009, the International Accounting Standards Board started an ambitious plan to make accounting for banks easier to understand. In no less than 97 pages, the IABS laid out its plan to reduce complexity in the…
Fifty shades of green bank capital
This week the Financial Times reported on a strange initiative of the European Commission. Its vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis spoke favourably of the introduction of a “green supporting” factor for banks that invest in green assets. Green is…
Double leverage, a regulatory tribulation
Last week, the UK Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) published a consultation paper on group policy and double leverage, in which the PRA wants to limit the risks arising from excessive double leverage. The consultation paper…
Comments on RBNZ’s second capital review paper: What should qualify as bank capital?
The RBNZ wants to redefine capital. My comments are below. In short: don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good. The RBNZ runs the risk of achieving just what it does not want by…
Kiwibank capital flip-flop
About a fortnight ago Kiwibank announced that its formerly disqualified capital instruments now re-qualify as capital. Yay! This after a the capital disqualification event on which I wrote not so long ago. There was almost no…
RBNZ decides on Kiwibank cocos – uh oh
No surprise here: the RBNZ decided to render two cocos ineligible for regulatory capital purposes. This is what Kiwibank reported yesterday. The holders of the instruments likely will keep their coupon, at the expense of…
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