capital levels

EBA Publishes Final Draft Technical Standards and Guidelines on Methodology and Disclosure for G-SIIs

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has published final draft technical standards and revised guidelines on the further specification of the indicators of global systemic importance and their disclosure. The guidelines have been developed according to Directive 2013/36/EU (the Capital Requirements Directive, CRD IV) and in line with international standards. CRD IV requires G-SIIs to hold higher capital levels in order to contain the risks they pose to the financial system and the impact that their potential failure may have on sovereign finance and taxpayers (so-called “too big to fall”). The draft revised Guidelines stipulate that not only G-SIIs, but also other large institutions with an overall exposure of more than €200 billion and which are potentially systemically relevant, will be subject to the same disclosure requirement as the G-SIIs.

The revision was prompted by a new data template and some minor changes introduced by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) in January 2015 for the identification of global systemically important banks (G-SIBs). The list of EU G-SIBs identified by the BCBS and the global systematically important institutions (G-SIIs) identified by Member States’ authorities are identical.

The final draft technical standards and revised draft guidelines are set out in three reports (revised technical standards (RTS) report, implementing technical standards (ITS) report, and draft guidelines report). The final RTS and ITS will be presented to the European Commission for endorsement, following which the RTS will be subject to scrutiny by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU before publication in the Official Journal of the EU.