Basel regulators make QIS workbooks available
BASEL - Global banking regulators have suggested that templates of workbooks and instructions used in previous impact studies of the Basel II bank safety rules could be used in separate national studies now underway or planned.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the architect of the complex, risk-focused Basel II upgrade of international rules for bank capital adequacy, said in December the workbooks and instructions could be tailored to the needs of countries conducting such studies.
Germany and the US are currently carrying out so-called fourth quantitative impact studies into the affect on their banks of the Basel II rules. Britain plans a fourth quantitative study (QIS 4) and most of the 13 member countries of the Basel Committee intend carrying out field tests in 2005 of the Basel II rules as embodied in text agreed in June.
The Committee, which comprises senior banking supervisors from North America, Europe and Japan and which in effect regulates international banking, had organised previous QIS's of how banks around the world might be affected by the new rules. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, also carried out its own, similarly numbered, studies of the likely impact on EU banks of the Capital Requirements Directive, the law that will bring Basel II into effect in the 25 EU member-states.
The results of the last of the Basel-organised studies - QIS 3 - were published in March 2003. The Basel Committee notes that banks have since then improved significantly on their ability to estimate the parameters for the more advanced approaches to measuring their credit and operational risks. Furthermore, some analyses conducted by the Committee after QIS 3 were based on approximations because not all the necessary information was available. Hence the decision of several countries to conduct their own further studies.
German regulators hope Germany's QIS 4 will provide more reliable data on the calibration of unexpected losses, securitisation and the advanced measurement approaches to operational risk. The study was launched at the beginning of December and is to be completed by the end of February.
Some 30 banks are participating in the US QIS 4.
Basel Committee chairman Jaime Caruana said in January the Basel regulators plan to begin a Basel II recalibration exercise in the autumn, some months earlier than previously anticipated.
