This article provides information on the Basel Committee’s assessment of the adoption of the Principles for Operational Resilience and the revised Principles for the Sound Management of Operational Risk. The Committee believes the information provided may be useful for both supervisors and banks in their day-to-day activities. This document is for informational purposes only and does not constitute new supervisory guidance or expectations. The Committee assessed the adoption of the Principles for Operational Resilience (POR) and the revised Principles for the Sound Management of Operational Risk (PSMOR, or collectively, “the Principles”) published in March 2021. The assessment is meant to promote the adequate and timely adoption of the Principles. The assessment found that the effectiveness and maturity of POR and PSMOR adoption vary across banks and jurisdictions. Continue reading…

by Ajay Katara

Basel III end game is the latest update to the US Capital requirements which will bring about sweeping changes to the existing capital requirements in place for the US banks. Under the existing provisions there are two approaches which apply to US banks. The standardised approach applies to all banking organisations (other than community banks) and advanced approaches apply to category 1 and category 2 US banks, and they must also compute Risk Weighted Assets (RWA) under the standardised too. The US regulators have proposed July 2025 for compliance with new requirements with a three-year transition period ending in Jun 2028. The new regulation will bring about a lot of changes and will fundamentally apply to banks with asset sizes greater than USD 100 Mn with specific changes applying to banks designated between category 1 to category IV. Continue reading…

The Commission welcomes the final agreement reached by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU at the final trilogue on the Regulation introducing European Digital Identity Wallets. This concludes the co-legislators’ work implementing the results of the provisional political agreement reached on 29 June 2023 on a legal framework for an EU Digital Identity, the first trusted and secure digital identity framework for all Europeans. This marks an important step towards the Digital Decade 2030 targets on the digitalisation of public services. All EU citizens will be offered the possibility to have an EU Digital Identity Wallet to access public and private online services in full security and protection of personal data all over Europe. Continue reading…

The joint efforts across the European Union to fight terrorism will be stepped up by judicial authorities sharing a wider range of information on terrorism cases with Eurojust. EU Member States have an improved legal basis to inform on ongoing and concluded terrorism cases with the entry into force today of an amendment of the Eurojust Regulation. These data will be transmitted to the European Judicial Counter-Terrorism Register (CTR) managed by Eurojust. This will help to better detect links between terrorism cases or connections with other serious crimes.

Continue reading…

A new study from the Open Finance technology and advisory services provider Konsentus has found that there are now more than 65 national open banking programs globally. Konsentus has updated its Global Open Banking and Open Finance Map to include richer data on the evolution of open banking across the world. It reveals that open banking, the new wave of financial data access, has reached a significant milestone, with 68 countries (representing 35% of the world) either live or in development. The Konsentus study showed there is a clear regulatory push towards open banking, with 64% of open banking initiatives being mandatory via legislation. Continue reading…

by Christine Lagarde

I would like to thank the Bank of Greece for hosting our dinner tonight (October 25th). And thank you for the tremendous effort you have put into organising this external Governing Council meeting at your impressive headquarters here in Athens. Standing in this hall, I am struck by the overwhelming sense of continuity with the past. So much of what we consider to be European civilisation has emerged from these surroundings. This is the home of Pericles and the cradle of democracy. It gave us Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the foundations of our philosophy. The ancient Greeks taught us mathematics via Euclid, science via Archimedes and poetry through Homer. And this is not to mention the timeless contributions to theatre, art and architecture that Greek civilisation has bequeathed to us. Continue reading…

TUI, leading group in the touristic market, and The Fun Lab, consultancy and engineering firm specialising in water parks and leisure pools, have signed an agreement in which the tour-operator entrusts the firm with managing the safety of their water parks and leisure pools at both owned and tour-operated hotels internationally. This collaboration commenced with an initial project involving the audit of 8 water parks at tourist resorts, managed or sold by TUI in Turkey this summer. Having successfully implemented this initial project the collaboration will be expanded further, to cover sites in Egypt and Mexico. Continue reading…

Agustín Carstens

I would like to thank the organisers of the 2023 High-Level Meeting on banking supervision for the Americas for inviting me to speak today. It is a pleasure to join you to discuss lessons from the bank failures that occurred in March this year. Recent bank failures in the United States and Switzerland have prompted a debate about the adequacy of the current prudential framework for preserving financial stability. In particular, these episodes have shed light on how bank resolution frameworks are functioning. As you know, resolution frameworks are one of the key innovations that followed the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Authorities adopted several measures to make bank failure management frameworks less dependent on public support. Continue reading…

The Commission has adopted a new Communication on Enhancing the European Administrative Space[*1] (ComPAct), which proposes concrete actions to help public administrations meet the needs of people and businesses across Europe. ComPAct is the Commission’s first ever comprehensive set of actions to support the modernisation of national administrations and to strengthen their cross-country collaboration so that they can address common challenges together. Efficient national, regional and local public administrations are critical to deliver EU and national priorities on the ground, to implement policies and reforms that benefit people and businesses alike, and to channel strategic investments towards the green and digital transitions. They are an important enabler for greater competitiveness across the EU. Better implementation of EU and national policies and more effective administrative performance will address the expectations of Europeans for less bureaucracy and more transparency, and could save EU people and businesses billions of euros per year. Continue reading…

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has recently published its latest Annual Report. The report, which was delivered to G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors ahead of their meeting in Marrakesh, describes the FSB’s work to promote global financial stability. The report looks back at the banking turmoil in March 2023. It notes that swift and decisive actions were taken by the relevant authorities and that the already implemented Basel III reforms helped shield the global banking sector and real economy from a more severe banking crisis. The FSB’s review concludes that these events demonstrate the soundness of the international resolution framework but identifies several areas to enhance its implementation. Continue reading…